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# LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 


UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 



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THE 


Coming Struggle; 

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WHAT THE PEOPLE ON THE PACIFIC COAST 

THINK OF THE 


COOLIE INVASION. 



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By M. B. STARR 




“The accumulations and consolidations of wealth in a few hands, in the hands of vast 
corporations, are threatening the liberty of the individual, the integrity of the State, the 
purity of the court, the very existence of popular legislation; and nothing but the true 
spirit of religion will ever enable this nation to meet its coming struggles—for we are going 
to have struggles.*' * * * There is not a State in this Union that we can afford to 
have barbarous." 

HENRY WARD BEECHER. 



SAN FRANCISCO: 

Excelsior Office, Bacon & Company, Book & Job Printers, 

Corner Clay and Sansomb Streets. 

1873- 












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CONTENTS. 




PAGE. 

Is the Coolie Trade Right when Viewed from a Scriptural Stand-point. H 

The Social Problem. 22 

How to Remove the Evil.‘. 24 

The Decline and Fall of the Toiling Caucasian. 26 

The Coolie Trade Corrupts the Public Morals'. 30 

What shall We do with Them?. 32 

The Coolie Trade Corrupts the Public Finances. 33 

A Republican Government cannot exist long after it begins to tolerate 

any Species of Servile Labor. 38 

The Remedy..>... 43 

The Time has Come to Report Progress. 45 

False Inducements Held Out to the People by the Railroad Companies, 

to get their Money and Patronage. 48 

Our Country in the Future. 55 

What Would be the Consequence if such a System of Cheap Labor 

Prevailed all over this Coast ?.,.. 64 

What Would be the Result if the Same Number of Coolies Should 
Come into the Eastern, Western, and Southern States during the 

Next Fifteen Years ?. 67 

Capital and Labor Ought to be Friends . 70 

Is the Public Benefited by the Coolie Trade?. 72 

The Chinese Question Must be Discussed. 75 

The Coolies and Real Estate Owners. 78 

Is there any Reasonable Prospect that We will ever Bring the Pagans, 
as a Race, in the Condition of Slaves, up to our Standard of 

Morals and Civilization?. 80 

The Next Evil that Naturally Accommodates itself to the Numerical 

Strength of the Coolies is a Landed Aristocracy. 81 

Monuments of Cheap Labor. 83 

Agricultural and Horticultural vs. Coolie Labor. 85 

Labor-saving Machinery vs. Coolie Labor. 86 

The Coolie Invasion. 89 

Foreigners are not yet Advised of What is Going On. 91 

What has the Coolie Trade to do with the Eastern States ?. 92 

Inconvenience to the Citizens. 94 

But Where shall They Go ?. 94 

The Man of Straw. 97 

The Chinese Question from a Voting Stand-point.101 

The Right Man and the Right Party will Come .104 

The Working Classes Conquered the Slaveholders.105 

Chinese as Silk Growers.109 

The Duty of the Nation to Defend Itself.113 

Duty of Political Parties.116 










































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PREFACE. 




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As the friends of the laboring classes deem it necessary that 
there should be a more general diffusion of intelligence upon 
a subject of such vital importance as the present system of coolie 
importation, this little volume has been hastily prepared from such 
1 sources as have been most readily available. We do not by any 
r means profess to have exhausted the subject, but merely desire, as 
much as in us lies, to present the present aspect of the Chinese 
question. We enter upon this work in hope of a future harvest, 
as the farmer sows his grain. The war against coolieism is waged 
in the name of God and our country, our wives and our children. 
We know we shall awaken bitter opposition among the monopolies 
and those who “love to have it so.” But the earnest advocates 
of universal freedom in all the States and Territories of the Amer¬ 
ican Union will be sure to get the ear and heart of every honest 
patriot and lover of mankind. No one person pretends to be the 
author of this book. Its matter is made up of original communica¬ 
tions, and selections from the most popular and reliable papers on 
this coast—the Chronicle, Bulletin, Call , Examiner, Nationalist, 
and Sacra?ne?ito Union. 










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INTRODUCTORY. 


It is now generally understood and believed that a powerful 
combination of capital is systematically organized to bring into the 
midst of the most civilized portions of the world vast hordes of the 
debased, ignorant, and corrupt heathen races, to fill all positions of 
industry with servile laborers, to the practical exclusion of working 
citizens. All reflecting men know that the results of such a system 
of labor universally admitted to the United States would be more 
disastrous to the moral, social, and financial condition of the whole 
people, than to the importation of Africans and the continuation of 
chattel slavery ever was or ever would have been; for as China 
contains over one fourth of the earth’s population, and as they are 
among the most corrupt, and more easily enslaved than most other 
heathens, it is not impossible that this combination of wealthy im¬ 
porters may scatter all over our chosen land, in every State and 
Territory, a number of servile laborers, equal to the average num¬ 
ber of slaves who once occupied the Southern States. In this 
event they must do the ordinary work of all our rich valleys, 
productive mountains, inexhaustible mines, manufactories, and 
thoroughfares, to the immense injury of all the real interests of 
American citizens and free institutions. By their coming as serv¬ 
ile labor, they add nothing to our military strength, nothing to 
our material wealth, nothing to our political welfare, nothing to our 
moral improvement, nothing to our educational interests, nothing 
to our architectural beauty, nothing to our aesthetic taste, and no 
refining influence to our social intercourse, but directly to the con¬ 
trary of all these, so that the only possible advantage of their pres¬ 
ence is to cheapen the price of citizen labor. But universally to 
cheapen the price of an article is to injure the class of persons in¬ 
terested in its production ; so to cheapen the price of citizen labor 
is to injure the whole laboring class, because labor is their capital. 
But as the price of labor and capital is always regulated in market 
according to supply and demand, an excess of servile labor will 
reduce the demand for citizen labor. Therefore, to cheapen the 
labor of a citizen by^introducing a lower race of servile laborers, is 
to exclude the citizen, and often a whole family, for one servile 
laborer employed. Now the inevitable result of this is to remove 



10 


United States will be willing to enfranchise several millions of un¬ 
civilized idolaters, the inevitable result must be a total prohibition 
of their importation or immigration as a low class of servile 
laborers. One of these alternatives must take place, for if it is not 
safe to admit heathens to all the privileges that the Constitution 
guarantees to enlightened European immigrants, it is not safe lor 
them to come at all. As this is to be effected through the treaty¬ 
making power, we do most earnestly but respectfully importune 
Congressional interference against the selfish schemes and com¬ 
binations of capital employed to import the heathen from China, or 
any country, into the United States. Also, to prevent the immi¬ 
gration or importation of heathen women for purposes of corrup¬ 
tion, with no other object in view than to increase their own wealth 
at the entire sacrifice of all that is most sacred and dear to tkgir 
countrymen. At the same time we do most emphatically depre¬ 
cate any unkind or cruel treatment of the heathen unfortunately in 
our midst. We desire and Encourage every effort of good people 
to elevate, christianize, and civilize them or any other degraded 
fellow beings. But we do most imperiously, and with the utmost 
of our power, demand, that the terrible evil of importing the low 
races of the earth into our. country, East, West, North or South, 
shall be prohibited, as everywhere fraught with dire calamity to 
our loved country, and subservient only to the sensuality and 
moneyed interests of unprincipled men. 




11 


, IS THE COOLIE TRADE RIGHT, WHEN VIEWED 
FROM A SCRIPTURAL STANDPOINT? 


We sometimes hear it asserted that ministers of the Gospel make 
poor politicians, and are not safe guides in matters pertaining to 
the public weal or woe. It is argued that their habits of abstract 
dealing unfit them to grapple with the real and tangible, and that, 
though theoretically sound, practically they are hazardous. To 
illustrate : How much time, eloquence, and ink do they expend to 
prove the doctrine of man’s depravity in the abstract, but coming 
in contact with the individual man in the actualities of life, they 
treat him as though he were the reverse of all this, and allow 
t themselves to be deceived and misled with an ease and success 
that is simply marvelous. Holding fast the great doctrine of a free 
Gospel, and salvation to all who will receive it, they throw wide 
open the doors of the church, and reaching out the arms of Chris¬ 
tian benevolence, cry out, “ Whosoever will, let him come and take 
of the water of life freely.” Now these fundamental doctrines 
are dear to the hearts of all Christians, and in a spiritual sense as 
broad as the wants of the human family, but when, in our anxiety 
for the conversion of the world, we spread the mantle of Christian 
charity over such abominations as the African slave trade or coolie 
importation, we supplement our Gospel commission with a doctrine 
of devils. And if ever Satan is transformed into an angel of light, 
it is when he brings a Bible doctrine and Christian ministers to 
justify his low, scavenger work of scraping up the scum and filth of 
heathenism and emptying it into the heart of Christianity. We 
have been led to these, to us painful, remarks, by the course pursued 
by many Christian ministers, of different denominations, on this 
Coast, who instead of sounding the trumpet of alarm, are crying 
“Peace, peace,” while they encourage the arch-disturber of all 
public tranquility. 

It is to meet this sickly sentimentalism, this being wise above 
what is written, that we open our book with a consideration of the 
Scriptural answer to the question, Is it right to import the heathen 
to' cheapen the labor and corrupt the morals of our own country¬ 
men ? 

If it is Compatible with the duty of some Christian ministers to 
advocate such a traffic, then it is compatible with the duty of others 






12 


equally conscious to deny the necessity and righteousness of the 
same. 

All theologians unite in taking The Bible History of the A?icient 
Jews as" a type of human nature in all ages, and God’s dealings 
with his chosen people as a warning and lesson for all time. In 
less than five hundred years after the flood, such is the tendency of 
the human heart to depart from the worship of a pure, spiritual 
being, that to again preserve the human family from sinking into 
gross materialism, Abraham was commanded to leave his father’s 
house, and go forth not knowing whither he went. In Joshua 24:2, 
we find that “ They (his ancesters) served other gods,” therefore, 
Abraham must be separated from the entanglements and social 
corruptions of an idolatrous kindred and go out under the Divine 
guidance to found a new nation “ Whose God is the Lord.” The 
history of the Jews, from the calling of Abraham to the time when 
they became “ a nation, scattered and peeled,” is replete with the 
divine warnings and their defection. Let him who doubts read 
such passages as Ex. 34: 11, 12, 13. “ Observe thou that which I 

command thee this day : behold, I drive out before thee the Amorite, 
and the Canaanite, and the Hittite, and the Perizzite, and the 
Jebusite. Take heed to thyself, lest thou make a covenant with 
the inhabitants of the land whither thou goest, lest it be for a snare 
in the midst of thee : But ye shall destroy their altars, break their 
images, and cut down their groves,” etc. Deut. 7 : 16, “ And thou 
shalt consume all the people which the Lord thy God shall deliver 
thee ; thine eye shall have no pity upon them : neither shalt thou 
serve their gods ; for that would be a snare unto thee.” Num. 33 : 
55, “ But if ye will not drive out the inhabitants of the land from 
before you, then it shall come to pass that those which ye let 
remain of them shall be pricks in your eyes and thorns in your 
sides, and shall vex you in the land wherein ye dwell.” Deut. 28 : 
27, “ The Lord will smite thee with the botch of Egypt, and with 
the emerods, and with the scab, and with the itch, whereof thou 
canst not be healed.” Ps. 106 : 34, 35, 36, 37, 40, “They did not 
destroy the nations, concerning whom the Lord commanded them, 
but were mingled among the heathen , and learned their works. 
And they served their idols which were a snare unto them. Yea, 
they sacrificed their sons and their daughters unto devils. There¬ 
fore was the wrath of the Lord kindled against his people.” 

These are a few of the many passages that might be adduced to 
show how little encouragement the Old Testament Scriptures give 
to those who would justify the importation of heathen into our 
midst. 

Let us now turn from what some might call the narrow and exclu¬ 
sive past, to that broader platform and clearer light, illustrated by 
our Saviour and his disciples in The New Testament Scriptures , 
When the long expected Messiah appeared, he chose twelve men, 
not from among the learned Sanhedrim, or the aristocratic Phari- 




13 


sees, but from the laboring classes, therefore naturally in sympathy 
with the common people, and gave them this commission, “ Go ye 
into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature ; Begin¬ 
ning at Jerusalem.” “ Therefore, they that were scattered abroad 
went everywhere preaching the word,” and with such success that 
in a few years it had penetrated into all the then civilized nations 
of the earth. For about four hundred years the church maintained 
its purity, when the same old disposition of the natural heart to 
substitute the material for the spiritual, gradually crept into its 
worship in the form of symbols, images, pictures, and gorgeous 
ceremonials, culminating in a union of church and state, eclipsing 
the spiritual power of the church and involving it in one thousand 
years of superstition, ignorance, and poverty, rightly called the 
darkest period of Christianity. The piety of the church, languish¬ 
ing in dungeons, buried in cloisters, and hidden in obscure moun¬ 
tain vales, aroused by the trumpet blasts of Luther and other 
reformers, once more emerged from the surrounding darkness. 

Nearly three hundred years ago there was sifted out by persecu¬ 
tion, from the degenerate forms of the Old World, a band of devoted 
spiritual worshipers, who planted in the American wilderness a 
new nation, with a separation of church and state, a purity of prac- 
tice, and an individual freedom and responsibility, such as the 
world had never known before. But from that day* to this it has 
been difficult to maintain our integrity in a religious or in a political 
sense. Even now empty forms and ceremonies exhaust much of 
the vitality of the Christian church, and the foes to our political 
liberty have been, and still are, numerous, crafty, and powerful. 

We read, in the book of Job, that, “ When the sons of God 
came to present themselves before the Lord, Satan came also 
among them.” Now we may be sure, that if he did not come in 
the same vessel with the Pilgrim fathers, he was not far behind, for 
tradition says, that not long after they landed, the “ Mayflower ” 
that brought them, went on another and far different errand, even 
with speculators to buy or kidnap a cargo of African heathen to 
mingle with this new government of civil and religious freemen as 
slaves; This was the poisonous leaven in our body politic that 
wrought out its legitimate fruits until it culminated in the . late 
slaveholders’ rebellion. The termination of the fearful struggle 
can not fail to convince every thoughtful mind that the Lord hath 
chosen this American Union to be a peculiar people unto himself, 
and that if we do not sell our birthright for a mess of pottage, “He 
will bless us and make us a Messing to others.” But, soon after 
the overthrow of chattel slavery, a new combination of conspirators 
against the public good, under the guise of promoting our com¬ 
mercial and financial prosperity, conceived a design of importing, 
for mere love of money and power, an unlimited number of heathen 
men and women, with their customs and vices, to mingle freely 
with our children and permeate all classes of society. If “The 
i* 




14 


love of money is the root of all evil,” it is not strange that the 
worshipers of mammon should readily fall in with this scheme for 
enriching themselves, but that Christians should be so “ blinded 
by the god of this wprld ” as to believe the spurious doctrine, that 
God is sending the heathen here to be converted, is passing strange, 
for it is only a resurrection of the old pro-slavery argument, which 
being interpreted means, “ Let us do evil that good may come.” 
Let us now rhake an application of the teaching of God’s word ; 
the warnings of history, and our own national experience to the 
present struggle. Is not human nature the same now as of old ? 
Are w«e so incorruptible that we can hope to take live coals into 
our bosom and not be burned ? Are our sons and daughters this 
day lifted so high in the moral and intellectual scale as to be proof 
against this corrupting pagan atmosphere, that we dare expose 
them where so many have fallen to rise no more ? Shall we go 
right on doing this great evil for a little pleasure and ease, a little 
more wealth and dazzling splendor, hazarding the life of the nation 
with the pious plea that some good may be done to a few heathen ? 
Will we disinherit our own children and youth from all those free 
institutions bought by the labor and sufferings of our forefathers 
to gratify a few people with wealth and power, under the deceitful 
plea that they are giving civil and religious freedom to the treach¬ 
erous heathen? The Mosaic rule was, and the rule of the New 
Covenant is, “ to come out from among the heathen and be sepa¬ 
rate.” We are admonished that if they “ remain among us ,” they 
will become “snares to our feet, a stinging pain to our eyes, and a 
goad to our body politic,” as the Freedmen are to-day, and how 
long they will continue to be “a bone of contention,” God only 
knows. Shall we then go on to import ‘the priests of Buddhism 
with their images and pictures, their courtesans and temples ? Are 
we so soon desirous to marry our sons to their daughters, and their 
sons to our daughters ? Shall we bring upon ourselves the debas¬ 
ing manners, evil diseases, and pestilences of Asia to punish us for 
our hypocrisy, love of money, and lusts of the flesh ? Is it possi¬ 
ble, “ that we have eyes but will not see, and ears but will not hear 
the things that belong to our peace ?” But with all the costly ex¬ 
perience of the past, and the Divine injunction to the contrary, the 
rule in America to-day is to bring the heathen, by international law 
and covenant, into our inheritance on a more extended scale than 
has been known in any period of the world. 

The natural tendency of idolatry is to ignorance, vice, and des¬ 
potism. In our own government the* ruling power is the will of 
the people ; every man, permitted to reap the benefits of soil and 
labor may aspire to all the Constitution guarantees its citizens, and 
should be permitted and required to cultivate the highest standard 
of intelligence. The idolatry of our own hearts is bad enough, but 
when we permit despotic pagans to establish an independent 
heathen worship in a nation of political and religious liberty, 




15 


founded upon the principle of worshiping one only true God or 
none at all, we not only violate God’s commandment, but the true 
spirit and vital principle of our own political compact. For that 
which we prohibit in Mormons and slaveholders and condemn in 
all individuals, we permit practical idolators to do without rebuke 
and protect them under our flag. Now as the tendency of the nat¬ 
ural heart is downward, the immoralities of the pagans, witnessed 
by the children and youth of Christian communities, would gradu¬ 
ally lead them from the virtues of a pure, spiritual worship to the 
material. Perhaps there is little danger of our children becoming 
idolators in the sense of burning red sticks to Josh, but the danger 
is that failing to perceive the difference between the true and the 
false, they will lose respect for any and all forms of religious 
worship whatever. So the permission of an independent pagan 
idolatry in America, protected by law or treaty with a nation of 
heathen, who outnumber our own inhabitants more than ten 
times, who may come in armies with all their abominations to en¬ 
joy equal privileges of soil and labor, to go and come like bees 
from the flower to their own hive, will in time put the light of 
learning, liberty, and religion out of this nation as surely as dark¬ 
ness follows the setting sun. Already the heathen have come into 
our camp, but we are not yet in their fatal grasp ; even after that 
time comes, and they are in the ascendency, we may linger on a 
few years in strife and feuds. But with the present system of 
cheap labor centinued, the consummation of our ruin must ulti¬ 
mately come, with the overthrow of political and religious free¬ 
dom. When it does come it will be celebrated by the wailings of 
American citizens, commingled with the sneering taunts of idola¬ 
tors, who have been taught and some of them baptized by Chris¬ 
tians, who thought they could give them salvation while they “made 
them hewers of wood and drawers of water;” but now released 
from bondage, they will join with the maddened working citizen to 
overthrow the aristocratic government as successfully as the Goths 
and Vandals invaded Greece and Rome. 

But I hear some one, whose heart is all aglow for the salvation 
of the whole human race, say, “ My dear brother, you are preach¬ 
ing the old, narrow principles of the Jews, who draw a circle 
round themselves and send everybody to perdition who will not 
come inside of it. Does ?iot the Gospel throw its gates wide open 
and invite whosoever will to come and drink of the water of life 
freely?” Surely, but that doe$ not prove that the Constitution of 
our political and religious compact invites an unlimited horde of 
idolators to partake of its equal advantages of labor and soil, 
whom it would not deem safe to admit to an equal participation in 
the 1 administration of the government. Nor does the invitations 
of the Gospel necessarily require us to invite the heathen to come 
to America for salvation. Much less does the Master invite them 
to come where the gates of perdition are thrown wider open to re- 




16 


/ 


ceive them than at home. He does not require his own people to 
take away the living of one hundred Christians to feed half as 
many heathen. But has he not promised that the heathen shall be 
given to His Son for an inheritance ? Certainly, but he has not 
promised to give the heathen in the uttermost parts of the earth 
to a set of American gamblers, to be their possession. The New 
Testament is full of requirements for Christians to carry the Gos¬ 
pel feast to the heathen, but not a single command to bring the 
heathen among Christians for conversion, much, less for purposes 
of speculation and prostitution. But as neither the Constitution 
or the Gospel invites idolators to come with their leprosy, plagues, 
and small-pox into the whole camp of Israel to be a cheap class of 
servants for poor Christians; as they do not invite them to 
America to occupy the condition of slaves and concubines for 
aristocrats, stock-jobbers and under-strappers, the people of this 
coast object to their coming at all. Some may say, if Christianity 
cannot hold its own in a free competition with idolatry it is a fail¬ 
ure. Christianity is not a failure, but this plan of subjecting it to 
the filth and cheap labor of paganism is a failure. 

Observe the authority of the commission given by our Saviour to 
His disciples. “ Go ye therefore and teach all nations, baptizing 
them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy 
Ghost; and, lo ! I am with you always’, even unto the end of the 
world,” is embodied in the words “go and teach” He, who 
“ hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the 
face of the earth, and hath determined the bounds of their habita¬ 
tion,” commands us to go and tell every creature that the Messiah 
has come. If they do not hear and believe the message God will 
not hold us responsible. They will be no more likely to hear if 
shipped to America. Those who, like the early disciples, study 
the character and imitate the great model will be successful, be¬ 
cause this is God’s plan of preaching the Gospel to all nations, and 
the best for short-sighted mortals to pursue. Our Saviour com¬ 
manded his disciples to tarry at Jerusalem till they were indued 
with the power of the Holy Ghost, and then go out and preach the 
Gospel among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. But the plan 
adopted by the admirers of the new missionary code is, tarry at 
San Francisco until the spirit of covetousness has moved the im¬ 
postors to go out into all heathen nations and bring the lowest 
scum of pagan idolators, with their diseases and vices into your 
families, work-shops, and gardens; let their priests set up their 
temples, establish their harems, and carry on their disgusting orgies 
in the presence of your children and youth ; employ them as a 
low, cheap class of servants ; bring up your young men and women 
to be idle or boss over the heathen, while they do the work, and if 
the labor of any impudent citizen is cheapened thereby let him 
work in company with them at the same wages or not work at all, 
that these poor idolators may be converted from the error of their 




17 


ways, and American servants learn to know their places. This 
plan of converting the heathen reminds us of the'boy who told his 
father if he wanted his potatoes dug to “ fetch ’em on.” These 
men styled missionaries virtually say, fetch on your heathen if you 
want them converted and baptized. Let the American, German 
_ and English steamships unite with the six Chinese companies, be¬ 
ginning at Hongkong first, and ship them to San Francisco, the 
great Baracoon of the world, where we have mission houses and 
baptismal fonts, and can do these things after the most approved 
and latest style. Besides, we need them to do our work ; Ameri¬ 
can and Christian servants are too exacting! We can make 
money by their importation and cheap labor, while we save their 
souls. It will work like a* “labor-saving machine.” This is an 
age of progress when the heathen can be learned to fear God and 
eschew evil, while they worship their own gods, and pay their own 
expenses. Let them come, bargain for them, buy them, yea, com¬ 
pel them, any way to get them here. Let the sons of Jeroboam 
marry the Zidonian princesses, who will bring with them the gods 
of their fathers, and entice our descendants to follow after their 
abominations. Let them inaugurate their pagan institutions of 
learning in this glorious Union as our national symbols of civil and 
r religious liberty. If this plan of action is adopted, soon the more 
wealthy and aristocratic class of heathen will come and build their 
gaudy temples right along side of our churches ; then will our sons 
and daughters defile themselves at the altars of Baal, and the light 
of Bethlehem will go out in the darkness of a Babylonian cap¬ 
tivity. 

Some, now, as in the old pro-slavery times, are deluded by the 
fallacious idea that we can educate and co?ivert the heathen here, 
and then send them back to do the same for their countrymen at 
home. Did this theory work well in the case of the negro ? Is 
Africa becoming * evangelized through the labors of converted 
freedmen ? Said Rev. Foster, a far-seeing bishop of the M. E. 
Church, in a body of ministers, “ It costs one hundred per cent, 
more to educate and convert the Chinese here than it does at 
home ” He might have said one thousand times more, in view of 
the moral and financial ruin involved. If we believe that “ the 
love of money is the root of all evil,” let us not encourage a greedy, 
time-serving race of charlatans to delude the heathen with a pros¬ 
pect of temporal good, while to us is thrown the sop that they will 
be elevated and Christianized. 

“ As the Father hath sent me,” says Christ, “even so send I 
you.” If Christ did this for us, is it too much for us to leave 
father, mother, house, and lands, not holding our own life dear, to 
disciple nations? beginning, not with the heathen, but tarry at 
Jerusalem until we are imbued with the true missionary spirit, and 
then make our way among the Gentiles ; as Abraham left his kin¬ 
dred ; as Christ left all His glory; as the early Christians went out 




18 


upon the plan of “ Deny thyself and take thy cross.” So we, if we 
desire to teach all nations and baptize them in the name of the 
Holy Trinity, we must go as Christ came to us, and do the work 
on the Master’s own chosen field of labor. 

It seems that the author of the “new departure” in labor and 
missionary ethics (the Rev. O. Gibson, of San Francisco), did go, 
in obedience to the Master’s command, to teach and baptize the 
heathen in China, but he did not stay there. Perhaps he did not 
tarry long enough at Jerusalem to be imbued with a missionary 
spirit from on high before he went. Perhaps he found the work 
too self-denying when he got there. Perhaps, when the spirit of 
avarice imbued the Rehoboams to transfer the heathen to the land 
of political and Christian freedom, he was invited to a “higher 
sphere of usefulness,” with a more comfortable salary, where he 
can combine more of the otium cum digtiitate with his missionary 
work, and never undertake to teach and baptize the poor heathen 
“ on that level again.” We have no doubt but the laborer is com¬ 
fortably cared for by the “intelligent Chinamen” he so often 
quotes, and by American importers. We presume he is sincere in 
his efforts to teach the heathen according to the new code, but we 
do not think the Constitution of our country or the New Testa¬ 
ment teach or encourage any such transportation of an ignorant, 
credulous race to a Christian country, as a ?iecessity to cheapen the 
_ wages of dependent citizens, and take away their means of living, 
that a few men may be made dangerously and dishonestly rich, 
and perhaps convert a few Chinamen thereby. 

Politicians tell us that America is the brightest spot upon the 
globe, and the hope of the world. If so, will future generations 
realize these hopes if we encourage millions of uncivilized idolaters 
to compete with them in all the sources of living? If the Govern¬ 
ment corrupts its own fountain, will the stream be pure ? You re¬ 
member the fable of the hen that laid a golden egg every day ; the 
woman that owned her, hoping that she might find a mass of gold 
within, killed the hen ; but on examination, finding nothing more 
than what is common in all hens, was sadly disappointed. How 
much more foolish than that old woman shall we be if we destroy 
liberty and Christianity in America, hoping thereby to give free¬ 
dom and godliness to the idolaters of Asia ! In common with all 
others we rejoice over every step gained in the conflict waging 
between Christianity and the powers of darkness, but we prefer 
Christ’s own way to that of any or all others. A faint-hearted 
minister came to Wellington one day, and said : “Do you really 
think God requires us to leave our homes and go to the heathen 
“ with the gospel ?” “ Obey your marching orders,” was the 

prompt reply of the Iron Duke. 

We read in the July number, 1873, °f the Home Missionary, 
published by the A. H. M. Society, that “ Our Republican gov¬ 
ernment, and the invaluable free institutions that have risen up 




19 


under it, can be preserved only as the fear of God pervades the 
national mind.” Is there no danger then , that if to this “very 
melange of nations flung together in our rising States,” we add, by 
the close of the present year, with an ever increasing ratio, two 
hundred thousand heathen, that we shall stagger wider the load 
and fall, perhaps to rise no more. The Chinese now on the coast 
~ number about one hundred thousand. “As the result of Protest¬ 
ant efforts” (I extract from the lecture of Rev. O. Gibson), “about 
one hundred have been baptized and received into the various 
churches. Six of the unfortunate women are cared for in the Mis¬ 
sion House. One has been married to a white man, and another 
has gone forth to service in a Christian family. The latter, Jin 
Ho, was snatched from the cold waters of the Bay, into which she 
had thrown herself to escape from her life of slavery and shamed 
Add to this, if you please, half as many more in the Eastern States, 
to avoid an under estimate. Nor would we overlook a thousand 
more who have been improved in their minds and manners by 
Sabbath schools and other means of instruction. 

But, if we compare the good we may have done these heathen 
serfs, forced upon us for the sake of “ filthy lucre,” with the 
hundreds of young men, and some women too, who have been 
v ruined by their immorality ; if we could describe the iniquity and 
sorrow that their mingling with the people has occasioned, would 
it be unfair to assert that, in a moral point of view, the profit does 
not justify the outlay ? Would it be uncharitable to say, “Let us 
cease to do evil that good may come ?” The Saviour's plan is a 
costly sacrifice of suffering and self-denial, that carries salvation to 
the heathen without putting them in the way—to send a thousand 
semi-Christians to perdition to fit one heathen for heaven. The 
Gospel plan requires that men and women of established piety and 
ability should take the word of life and go among the heathen 
nations, and not only teach, but show in their lives and conversa¬ 
tion a consistent living example of its teachings. They must be 
upheld by the sympathy, prayers, and contributions of brethren at 
home, that they may give themselves wholly to the work. Christ’s 
plan enables every apostolic missionary to shed a burning and 
shining light over the ignorance of idolatry without involving 
civilized nations and their children in pagan vices. Thus each 
Christian household becomes a moral center from which the pure 
Jight of the gospel radiates into the surrounding darkness. But 
the plan now adopted by the importers, and encouraged by a 
Christian community, to benefit our country and the heathen too, 
is a miserable attempt to serve God and mammon at the same 
time. .Why is it that the tender mercies of these modern “ Good 
Samaritans ” are so suddenly turned toward the moral elevation 
of the Chinese, rather than the Hindoos or Africans ? Alas, let 
their rapidly accumulating millions testify. This system may be 
well enough for those who have one eye out for Christ and the 




20 


other for themselves ; but it does not work well for those who 
have an eye single to the glory of God and the good of their 
country. 

The working Classes of this coast are confident that we never 
can benefit the heathen as a race , by running such fearful risks 
to ourselves. The imported heathen naturally come in contact 
with the most unscrupulous classes ot American society. To him 
we are all Christians ; to him the distinction ot converted and un¬ 
converted is all a myth ; to him the drunkard, thief, profane, and 
corrupt, are all representatives of what our religion can do for 
us. Does any reflecting man believe that these benighted heathen, 
with their priests to watch their defection, will be able to eliminate 
the truth from our conflicting creeds and clashing sects ?” It so, 
they will form a most noted exception to all past experience. Look 
at the native Indian to-day, and all that an indiscriminate mingling 
with white men has done for them ! It has been only when mis¬ 
sionary labor was able to protect and exclude the savage from 
contact with vicious whites that any permanent, good has been 
done. The missionaries found the savages faithful in their marital 
and chaste in their social relations. To them in this respect the 
Mongolian bears no comparison. Some of the savage tribes have 
been semi-civilized, individuals converted, and many reformed, 
when kept excluded from the “ Bostons.” But we cannot locate 
the Asiatics on a reservation. If Christkin effort, with the almost 
incomputable aid of Government, cannot avert or avoid such 
disasters as the butchery of many citizens every year, and such 
tragedies as that of the late Modoc war, what encouragement have 
we to hope for anything better from an unlimited number of im¬ 
ported idolaters, who are proverbially more artful and treacherous 
than the American savage himself? 

Some may say, the African was Americanized, why not the 
Asiatic ? The imported African was stripped of his idols and free¬ 
dom to work for wages, or accumulate property, or return to his 
own country to start in. He was not permitted to establish a Fetish 
temple, or perform a single act of his former stupid worship of 
material things that would corrupt the children of his master. 
Hence, as he gradually forgot the religion of his fathers, the transi¬ 
tion from a material to a spiritual worship was a comparative 
necessity. For the protection of his master and the public good, 
he was not allowed to roam over the country at large and prowl 
about the neighborhood at night. He was loeated under positive 
restrictions and influences of society above him, that gradually 
brought his mind up to the highest standard that his degraded con¬ 
dition as a slave would admit. For this cause, the imported 
African, robbed of his idols, and under the restraints and education 
of home circles, obliged to hear the Gospel or nothing—stood a 
hundred times better opportunity than the savage for reformation, 
and a thousand times better than the pagan, who is permitted to 




21 


roam night and day, protected and sustained in his idolatry, gam¬ 
bling, and filthy orgies, under less restraint even than the native 
citizen. Besides, most of the imported Africans are dead, and 
their descendants are native Americans, speaking our language and 
worshiping our God, quite all are civilized and many are Chris¬ 
tians ; all are citizens, and intend to stay with us. But, oh ! at 
what a fearful price ! Would it be risking much to say that the 
cost of our experiment of mingling with the heathen in that direc¬ 
tion, in tears, blood, sacrifice, and treasure, would have bought all 
Africa and supplied it with Christian institutions ? Do we wish 
to buy another experience like that? Nevertheless, professed 
Christians argue now, as they did then, as an excuse for their 
importation, “ That the heathen will be converted;” “God sent 
them here for some good pnrpose ; ” “ He will make the wrath of 

man praise Him, and bring good out of evil;” “We must not 
war with God, we cannot thwart His Providence ;” and all that 
kind of miserable perversion of the truth to stop the mouths of a 
suspicious people. 




22 


r : '"TO 


THE SOCIAL PROBLEM/ 


I cannot well dismiss this subject without calling your attention 
to the social problem that is now agitating the Christian world, as 
it stands affected by the prospect of a permanent race of heathen. 
There might be some hope of ameliorating the evils of our own 
social condition, but the difficulties are greatly complicated by the 
unlimited influx of the heathen with their swarms of courtesans. 

The Gospel ministry, Christians, and the Government rose in arms 
to suppress the cruelties of Brigham Young. These cruelties were 
the natural result of polygamy. The daring leader of the Danites, 
Bill Hickman, says, “ Before that growing conspiracy was sup¬ 
pressed, the strength of polygamy had already developed a large 
number of beastly mutilated children of both sexes.” But the 
sanctified selfishness of Brigham Young was no more than a fly on 
your hat compared with the tendency of heathen idolatry to pervert 
the divinely-established relation between the sexes. I am informed 
by the best authority, the Chinamen themselves and those who have 
lived in China for years, that they-are a nation of Sodomites, and 
that great numbers of boys and men like those shipped to this 
country were eunuchated when young, and that large numbers of 
girls, designed for prostitutes, are deprived of their womanly quali¬ 
ties. Will you substitute these creatures for your own children, 
and the civilized races of the earth to work your soil, glean your 
mines, and carry off the spoil and leave nothing but their lechery 
behind ? Are they to become the emblematic principles of those 
stars and stripes ? Will you shut out a Christian man or woman, 
and place in the bosom of almost every family an artful, cunning 
idolater to cook our victuals, wash and iron our apparel, nurse and 
talk with our children, and mingle freely with its most susceptible 
members, as brothers are not permitted to do ? Shall we encourage 
and protect them in the practice of the same vices we condemn in 
Salt Lake, and profess to condemn in all heathen lands, and among 
our own citizens punish as the most atrocious crimes ? 

Go to Australia, and ask why they have taken measures to eject 
them from that continent. .At one time, when they numbered some 
less that one hundred thousand, there were but few courtesans. 
The men and boys were employed, as here, with a degree of confi¬ 
dence, but when it was known that the unsuspecting little girls of 





families were enticed to their dens and corrupted ; when, in the 
city of Ballarat, on many occasions, but on one, not less than ten, 
from eight to fourteen years of age, were brought into court so 
thoroughly debased that it was pitiful to witness the anxiety of the 
victims to excuse and screen the vile seducers in the face of incon¬ 
trovertible evidence—the puplic indignation was roused ! On this 
account their numbers are greatly reduced in Australia (to 20,000), 
and they are not permitted to enter the ports of New Zealand. 
This is the moral reason why British rule and all Europe have so 
earnestly repelled them. 




24 


HOW TO REMOVE THE EVIL. 


I think you are ready to hear the conclusion of the whole matter, 
How are we to remove this great evil ? How did you remove 
slavery ? How did you suppress Mormon violence and polygamy ? 
How would you prohibit the retailing of intoxicating drink as a 
beverage ? How did you make a treaty with China ? 

We must educate the mind and conscience to see that what they 
thought was right is working evil, and retrace our steps before it is 
too late. If we were the transgressors, let us be the first to repent. 
Better sacrifice the wealth of the Indies, and all the commerce of 
Asia, and never drink another drop of tea, than to flood our country 
with millions of idolaters, and deprive the laboring citizen of his 
means of living. We must appeal to the ballot-box, the working¬ 
man’s last strike for justice. 

Many of our conservative religious and political bodies have a 
nervous fear of agitating any subject that will endanger a division 
in their ranks ; like the Pharisees of old, it is easier for them to 
“build the tombs of the prophets and garnish the sepulchers of the 
righteous,” than to face living issues, and stand up manfully for the 
truth whether it is popular or not. Now, that the anti-slavery bat¬ 
tle is fought, it is the people’s pride to build towering monuments 
to its heroes, and garland the graves of those who died for its prin¬ 
ciples. It is easier to do this now than to stand firm in those early 
days when ministers shut their pulpits against and proscribed its 
lecturers. Then brickbats and rotten eggs were the powerful and 
pungent persuasives that a grateful public showered upon the head 
of him who dared fish up from the “muddy pool of politics,” this 
noisome, slimy reptile, and hold it up to the public gaze. 

Many timorous ones now are quaking and quailing before this 
new disturber of the public peace, and fain would shut their eyes 
and ears for “ A little more sleep, a little more slumber, a little 
more folding of the arms to sleep,” but, like Banquo’s ghost, “It will 
not down.” Is there not reason to fear that, if the Saviour should 
come suddenly to his spiritual temple, he would be obliged to re¬ 
enact that lively scene so graphically described in John"2 : 14, 16, 
we might expect to see, from the doors and windows, and every 
possible avenue of escape, of our costly city churches, a stampede 
of the very best broadcloth and satin, as the whip of small cords 





drove out the money-changers (monopolists), and those that sold 
sheep and oxen (coolies), and doves (coolie women), while in tones 
of righteous indignation, pealed forth, “Take these things hence ; 
My house shall be called a house of prayer, but ye have made it a 
den of thieves .' 1 ' 1 

Do you shrink before the coming conflict ? Already the forces' 
of labor and capital, of truth and error, of liberty and oppression, 
of Christianity and paganism are marshaled for the battle. Re¬ 
member the sufferings of our fathers for the first fifty years ; the 
fearful and sanguinary struggles of the Revolutionary war ; the 
still more stupendous drama of the late anti-slavery conflict when 
“ Greek met Greek.” Is freedom buried out of sight in the tombs 
of Washington, Lincoln, and the graves of our brothers ? Is there 
not sufficient moral influence and patriotism among the working 
classes of this glorious Union left now to make the great fountain 
of popular indignation boil up from its slumbering depths, and 
move en masse to the polls, and defeat this champion of the Phil¬ 
istines who has come out to defy the armies of the living God ? 

Fellow citizens, if you would avoid the death of Zimri and 
twenty-five thousand men, who brought heathen women into the 
camp of Israel ; if you would avoid.the doom of those who made 
a golden calf in the absence of Moses, and all the subsequent 
calamities that came upon Israel for mingling with the heathen ; 
if you would avoid the terrible overthrow of ancient empires, and 
the horrors of the Dark Ages, with the doom of the late slave¬ 
holders’ Confederacy, I beg of you destroy the molten calf and 
scatter it to the four winds. Prohibit the further immigration and 
importation of heathen into your chosen inheritance. Remove the 
last plague-spot of paganism, with its ignorance, vice, and oppres¬ 
sion, from your shores. Idolatry is not our God. It is not the 
God by whom we testify. It is not the God of intelligence and pro¬ 
gression. It is not the God of civil and religious freedom. It is 
not the people’s God. It is Nebuchadnezzar’s golden image ; will 
you bow down and worship that? No; rather pass through a 
storm of fire, heat seven times hotter than this nation ever en¬ 
dured before, and the God of your fathers, your God, will bring 
you out with heads unsinged and garments unscathed. 




26 


A 


THE -DECLINE AND FALL OF THE TOILING - 

CAUCASIAN. 


The Chronicle says : Year by year the question of Chinese im¬ 
migration becomes of greater interest to our people. With the 
exception of the manufacturers and others pecuniarily interested in 
the system of Chinese labor, there can be no doubt that the pres¬ 
ence of these people and the part they are taking in the industrial 
system is fraught with great injury to the welfare of the city, State, 
and coast Their introduction into the industrial system of the 
•city dates back about fourteen years. Since that time they have 
gradually encroached on the avocations of white workmen, and 
now they form about forty-five per cent, of the industrial workers, 
of the city. 

It was in the cigar business, since grown to such vast propor¬ 
tions, and by the senior partner of the firm of Engelbrecht & Levy, 
that they were first employed. This dangerous innovation was 
made by Mr. Engelbrecht in 1859, just five years after entering the 
cigar business. So great was the excitement about the matter, 
and so indignant were the laboring classes at this innovation, that 
for a year the Chinese workmen were escorted to and from their 
lodgings to the factory by a strong police force, to prevent their 
being mobbed. For three years Mr. Engelbrecht was alone in the 
employment of Chinese. The other cigar merchants entered into 
a league with the merchants to buy no cigars made by Chinese. 
Though not so extensive then as now, the cigar business gave em¬ 
ployment to a large number of white men and boys. As soon, 
however, as they saw the profits that were likely to arise from the 
employment of Chinese, the manufacturers began to break their 
engagement, and in 1862 they all followed the example of Engel¬ 
brecht. The bonds once broken, employer after employer intro¬ 
duced Chinese laborers into his workshop. They were employed 
in the Pioneer Woolen Mills in 1859, and in the Mission and 
Pacific Mills in 1861. About the latter year they found their way 
into factories for the putting up of canned goods and the making of 
boots and shoes. During the past five years their employment in 
industrial pursuits has become general. Among the first to employ 
them in the boot and shoe business were Wentworth, Wolf & Co., 
and Franklin & Co., now all out of business, and Buckingham & 







27 


Hecht and Rosenthal & Co., still engaged in business. Fully as 
many Chinese as whites are now employed in the boot and shoe 
business, and every new manufacturer just starting into business 
calculates upon taking into his employ a certain number of Chinese. 

It is interesting to examine the list of occupations they follow, 
and note how the field of labor, open to white artisans and laborers, 
has been encroached on. They are as yet absent from the great 
foundries, the boiler shops, the machine shops, and nearly all iron 
and steel works, except the file works and the wire works, in each 
of which about a dozen white men are employed among three or 
four times as many Chinese. None are found in the lead smelting, 
the gold and silver refining, nor in brass works. A number are 
employed in manufacturing tin ware. Few work in wood, but 
thousands are employed in the manufacture of clothing. Nearly 
all the undergarments, overalls, checked or flannel shirts, and even 
many of the tweed or coarse cassimere suits worn by our people, 
are made by Chinese on Dupont Street. Although all dealers in 
beautiful white, shining shirt fronts know that they are indebted to 
John’s skill for the polish that adds to the beauty of the garment— 
not many other people are aware of the fact. Chinese work in all 
cordial, bitter, and bottling establishments, and in several factories 
artificial champagne is aereated by them. Nearly all California 
delicacies of the season, in the shape o-f potted meats, preserved 
fruits, jams, jellies, and sauces, undergo the manipulation of 
Chinese workmen, and a few Chinamen are employed in the spice 
and ground coffee factories. All California salt is refined by them, 
and at least one yeast powder manufacturer can testify to their 
cleverness in compounding an article that assists white people who 
use it for making their bread. In the soap, candle, glue, and char¬ 
coal factories they are largely in the majority, and as the makers 
of poor cigars they reign supreme. They work in chemical works, 
glass factories, and artificial stone works ; they know how to make 
and peddle whisk-brushes and brooms, and every time there is an 
explosion people learn that Chinamen are around our powder 
works by the accounts of the killed and wounded. Sometimes 
they are employed in the manufacture of block pavement, and a 
number are engaged in making cement pipes and packing smoking 
tobacco, while a well paid few are found in all of the first-class 
photographic establishments of the city. Several thousands are 
employed as servants. 

According to the last census, the number of Chinese in the State 
was 49,310—very small if placed against the total population, but 
very large when it is recollected that they are nearly all adult 
males, and that the whole number of the adult males of California 
cannot be over 190,000. Their number in this city was 12,030, or 
one fourth of the entire number in the State. The whole number 
of the adult male population of this city is only about 40,000, and 
the adult Chinese number at least 10,000. It appears, therefore, 




28 


that for every four white men in the city there is one Chinaman. 
Of this 10,000, about 1,000 are engaged in business for themselves, 
about 1,000 are domestic servants, and the remaining 8,ooo are 
employed in manufactures. It can be seen from this what a 
multiplicity of avocations they have entered into, and how they 
have driven white men, women, and children out of the factories 
to starve or be idle and vicious. This will be better appreciated 
when it is learned that there were nearly five times as many 
Chinese in the city in 1870 as in i860, the number at the latter 
period being only 2,719. The other 8,000 have swarmed into the 
city since, and have, step by step, driven white men from the in¬ 
dustries enumerated, until now the white workmen of the city 
number only 10,000 against the Chinese 8,000. And it is not only 
that they have occupied the place of white workmen, but they have 
also stepped into the shoes of white employers, and now the 
number of 

CHINESE MANUFACTURING ESTABLISHMENTS 

Is quite large, and is increasing daily in our midst. Let any one 
who is disposed to doubt the fact, take a walk through that por¬ 
tion of the city bounded by Stockton, Montgomery, Broadway, and 
California streets ; let him also take a walk down Commercial 
street, and then state his impressions. Chinese boot, shoe, slipper, 
cigar, and clothing factories will be seen on every hand; Chinese 
tinsmiths, watchmakers, etc., will also be found in great numbers. 
Two years ago, save cigar factories, there were very few other 
Chinese industrial establishments to be found. Does not this 
give a lesson to those who employ Chinese labor on account of its 
cheapness ? And does it not tell them that the Chinese are only 
just beginning to assert themselves among us ? The Chinese em¬ 
ployer can obtain his countrymen at far cheaper rates, than the 
white employer can, and with equal enterprise and skill, what is 
there to prevent him driving his Caucasian competitor from the 
market ? The system by which these Chinese are brought to this 
country and 

PLACED ON THE MARKET 

Is not the least objectionable feature of the whole system, and like 
the coolie traffic to Cuba, is but one remove from a regular slave 
trade. There are here in San Francisco six Chinese companies, 
the Qung Chu, Sam Yip, YongWo, Gyen Wo, Hop Wo, and Hing 
Yung, who contract for supplying so many workmen to a manu¬ 
facturer, and who have agents in China. These agents paint in 
glowing colors the riches and fertility of California, and give 
accounts of the wages to be obtained here, which to the excited 
imagination of the Chinaman seem fabulous. He is told that he 
only needs to labor a few years in California, when he can return 
to China a wealthy man, and spend the remainder of his days in 
ease and contentment. He has no money, however, and how is he 




29 


to get to the far-off land ? “Very easily,” answers the agent; 
“ enter into a bond to repay the company the money, give your 
wife and children or other relatives as security, and you can go to 
the golden land.” This done, John is embarked and immediately 
enters into a condition of servitude to his company. His passage 
m costs fifty dollars ; his outfit, various incidental charges, and the 
cost of feeding and maintaining him when here before he is pro¬ 
vided with work, swell the bill to two hundred dollars ; and this 
has to be paid to the last farthing, or the wife or family or friend is 
sold into slavery. How if he dies on the passage or in California 
before the money is paid ? Once the Chinaman arrives in this city 
he comes directly under the control of the companies until he has 
paid the debt incurred in coming to America. He is then placed 
in one of 

TWO CLASSES. 

From one of them he is hired out as soon as convenient, to some 
white man as domestic servant, farm hand, or as a worker in any of 
the manufacturing establishments, save the larger cigar factories. 
Belonging to the other class, he is immediately set to work in one 
of the numerous Chinese manufacturing establishments. Owners 
yof factories, ranches, etc., make a contract for one of the first class 
with the Chinese agent of some company, who furnishes them at a 
certain stipulated price, say from seventy-five cents to a dollar a 
day, or sometimes higher. The agent who obtains them is paid 
the wages, and he pays the man, retaining his profit and a certain 
pro rata to pay the company. This is the way these contracts are 
made in the majority of cases outside the cigar business, though 
we are told there are many exceptions. When the Chinaman has 
paid all his debts, he is, of course, free to do as he pleases, but he 
generally remains a faithful adherent of the company that brought 
him out from China. 

IN THE CIGAR BUSINESS 

No man is, engaged until he is a thorough workman. He works 
with some Chinese employer for his board and lodging until he has 
mastered the trade. In all the principal cigar factories the wages 
are paid to the workmen themselves, who in some instances earn 
$12 per - week. Indeed, the pay-roll of one house in this city 
showed that packers earned all the way from $8 to $16.50 per 
week. Board and lodging costs them from $1.50 to $2 per week, 
and a suit of Chinese clothes, which costs $6, lasts six months; so 
that these cigar men are far from being badly off. In order to 
appreciate the injury that the extensive employment of Chinese 
does fo the city, let it be for a moment considered that they fill the 
places of 

EIGHT THOUSAND WHITE WORKMEN, 

Who, instead of earning $2,000,000, which is either sent to China, 
paid to head men, or to Chinese merchants for Chinese manufac- 
2 




30 


tured goods, were it not for the presence of the Chinese, would 
earn at a fair rate of remuneration nearly seven million of dollars, 
which would be spent in this city, would help to infuse new life 
into business and build up new manufactures. 

The high rate of wages paid to his white hands by the employer 
who also works Chinese, proves that it is_practicable to make a 
fair profit on nothing but white labor. Until about a year ago, 
Cobo, Martinez & Co. employed about forty white cigar makers, 
who earned as much as $20 per week, yet they made cigars at a 
profit. The truth is that the manufacturer is obliged to sell cheaply 
the articles made by cheap labor,*and is not able to obtain ulti¬ 
mately a larger profit than he would by the employment of white 
labor. 

Messrs. Buckingham & Hecht for two years employed white 
boys in their factory with the best possible results. If their 
example was more extensively followed we should have fewer 
recruits for the idle and vicious classes. If things go on as they 
have for the past fifteen years, Chinese will have complete control 
of the industries of this coast. They will, one after another, 
monopolize every industry ; they will be almost exclusively the 
farm hands, shepherds, and working miners, and from being 
workers they will become proprietors. 

1 1 


THE COOLIE TRADE CORRUPTS THE PUBLIC 

MORALS. 

The subject that is now agitating the mind of this coast, and 
soon to shake the foundation of the nation to its very center, is 
viewed from different standpoints. There are those who seem to 
look at the importation of coolies only in the light of dollars and 
cents. They think if our financial prosperity is depleted it is all 
the injury this trade can do us. But if, while they take our sources 
of living, they corrupt our moral virtues too, we are reduced to the 
status of pagan ethics. We hesitate not to say that there are 
many in the church, in the pulpit, in the halls of legislation, and in 
the combinations of capital against dependent labor, who try to get 
all that their neighbor has, simply to gratify the sordid ambition of 
having more than anyone else. To accomplish this, man will often 
resort to the most disgraceful means to justify the end. But if 
there is any folly ?nost supremely selfish, if there is any class of 
men to whom the appellation, “ thou fool,” would be most appro¬ 
priate in its application, it is to that particular class of men who 
are importing the disreputable women to this coast at the expense 





O 1 

Ol 


of the shame and ruin of these poor blinded heathen creatures and 
the moral corruption of their own countrymen. 

The genuine prosperity of any country is estimated by its intel¬ 
lectual and moral character ; but we challenge the history of any 
nation to produce a more disgraceful and immoral traffic, sustained 
-by national treaty. The present wholesale system of shipping 
young Chinese women to this coast out-Herods the shameful 
licentiousness of ancient Corinth. Some of these women may be 
virtuous, but on that account are to be sold for a higher price in 
the market of San Francisco. The most of them go directly into 
houses provided for them by the impostors to pursue the vile call¬ 
ing for whifch they were bought and landed on our shores as abso¬ 
lute chattel slaves. The unspeakable depths of shame to which 
these “intelligent” Chinese procurers and patriotic American 
importers have already descended is too disgusting to admit of 
.thorough investigation or to be read by a decent people. 

If a single old woman is caught furnishing supplies for an in¬ 
famous house in this city, we are all provoked to madness ; and 
yet the Washington Government, the representative of the Puri¬ 
tans, permits the most influential steamship navigation company in 
y the world to increase their great wealth by pandering to the basest 
passions of the human heart, knowing that it inflicts disease, pov¬ 
erty, and shame upon the whole people. The boasted treaty with 
China allows our whole country to be made one enormous brothel, 
and permits a monopoly of Money Kings to cover the ocean with 
steamships to keep this great charnal house well supplied with 
heathen courtesans, that put the old Sodomites to blush. These 
women have already become a nuisance in cities, mining, and rail¬ 
road towns, that the public will no longer patiently endure. 

Their influence is disastrous upon the morals of children and 
youth. Our young girls all over the State, who are obliged to pass 
by and daily behold these filthy creatures, are becoming so well 
acquainted with their character and employment, that they are be¬ 
ginning to regard them as a laughable and necessary evil. The 
early familiarity of small boys who are enticed to the dens of these 
heathen women, or obliged to pass by them daily, breeds a con¬ 
tempt for their own mothers, and begets a low estimate of the 
moral virtues of their sisters. To fully appreciate what I have 
said, you only need to live one year among the white boys and girls 
who are brought up in the vicinity of a Chinese camp. It would 
not be strange if this branch of the coolie trade goes on a few 
years, that there will be such a surplus of these miserable starving 
Celestials, that the citizens will be obliged to feed and clothe them 
in lazar houses after they have enriched, and been cast out, by 
their destroyers. 

Is it possible that the selfish covetousness of the times has so 
far triumphed over every emotion of the human heart, that the 
Government itself will license these monopolies to adopt the low- 




32 


est acts in the catalogue of meannesses to get money. Is the 
conscience of this whole nation sleeping so quietly at the shrine of 
mammon that it can give millions of subsidiary aid and comfort 
out of the public treasury to the steam navigation companies and 
railroad monopolies, to flood our coast with the lowest dregs of 
heathenism, to inflict on their countrymen a financial and leprous 
curse that beggars description ? 


WHAT SHALL WE DO WITH THEM? 

The pretense that Providence is sending over to America 
thousands of disreputable women, with a prospect of indefinite 
multiplication, to be converted to Christianity and then sent back 
to convert their countrywomen, is unworthy of a sensible people. 
It is true that some of them may be brought into Sabbath Schools, 
and persuaded to change their present views, and reform their 
habits, but we have no record of many such converts. The reason 
is obvious. If it is so difficult for a Christian to keep himself pure 
in the midst of such company, how much more difficult for a heathen 
woman to become a Christian in such circumstances, having been 
accustomed to no other life from her youth up. They not only en¬ 
counter the daily superstition of their own Josh—who makes a 
licentious life a part of their religion—but worse than all, the in¬ 
fluence of the American makes it almost impossible for her to 
escape if she would. 

But suppose a few of them are converted, of what earthly use 
are they to us? As you have destroyed their source of living, to 
what new industry would you point them ? Will you make seam¬ 
stresses and milliners of them ; would you make school teachers 
and missionaries of them ; would you make them household serv¬ 
ants ? Surely they are all in the unpleasant predicament of being 
obliged to learn these useful avocations just at the time they need 
them most. Hence the necessity of building asylums and school 
houses for labor and educational purposes. 

Who will bear this burden ? Will the churches ? Can you 
force a tax upon the people? It is true that the importers will 
give an occasional one hundred, or five hundred dollars, to aid your 
benevolent work, as hush money , if by so doing they may quiet 
their own consciences and silence your tongues. But if you sup¬ 
pose they are influenced by any philanthropic love to their coun¬ 
trymen, or the souls of these poor victims of their avarice and lust, 
you are hugely mistaken. 

Shall we encourage millions of these deluded women to mingle 





33 


in American society where a thousand times more incentives to 
vice beset them than at home, and then set ourselves at work to 
Christianize them ? Is it wise to encourage these floating chambers 
of hell to flood our country with a cheap prostitution for our sons, 
and then say, “ Lord, lead them not into temptation.” If the 
-moral elevation of these unfortunate women is our object, would it 
not be better and cheaper for both nations to prohibit their further 
importation forthwith, and spend the same amount of money on 
their reform at home, with a thousand times greater success, and a 
million times less damage to our countrymen. 

This traffic in coolie women is void of a single redeeming feature 
of utility or honor in the whole transaction. If these women were 
imported to be wives for their countrymen, the same as most 
European women are ; if they came here for any honorable service 
whatever, we might be more content; but truth and justice declare 
that they are imported expressly for the passage money and profit 
on their shame. 

Everybody knows that a class of men who are guilty of such an 
abominable traffic in the bodies and souls of heathen women, for 
money, render themselves dishonorable to all good people in every 
^rank of human society and in all human governments. When they 
brought them here, knowing their character and habits, they violated 
the true spirit of the treaty ; they rebelled against the law of heaven 
and committed an outrage upon the established order of all decent 
society. 


THE COOLIE TRADE CORRUPTS THE PUBLIC 

FINANCES. 

Every genuine lover of his country rejoices in the multiplication 
of commercial facilities, manufactories, and public improvements. 
It is well for our country that we have some men who are endowed 
with leadership and able to push forward in gigantic enterprises. 
We have no disposition to look on and growl because other men 
do that which we had neither courage nor capacity to do. We have 
no fault to find with gentlemen because they have built steamers 
and railroads ; nor with any class of workmen in the soil or work¬ 
shops, because they have grown opulent thereby. 

Our opposition lies in the fact that the ?neans they etnploy to con¬ 
struct, make the public improvements a blessing to the monopo¬ 
lies—but a curse to the people. The people are willing to give the 
right of way, with millions of land and money, but they are not 
willing that the proprietors should set aside the citizen and employ 
the low races of the earth to do the work for half price, while they 





34 


charge the same or more for freights, fares, and productions. Thee 
oppose this because it is a base ingratitude, combined with thy 
selfishness of wealth, to deprive the working citizen of his birth¬ 
right, and casts its dark pall of poverty and corruption over the 
morals and finances of the whole commonwealth. 

We are told that this class of cheap laborers are needed to pro-' 
pel our industrial enterprises, because an American citizen requires 
too much to support him. But if the proprietors only are benefit¬ 
ed while the citizen is impoverished, of what advantage is it to the 
whole country. We tried this plan over 200 years in the sunny 
South. Was that portion of our countrymen who did their own work, 
and employed none but citizens to help them, any less intelligent, 
prosperous, and happy than those who employed “ cheap labor” to 
do the work for them, while their children were brought up in luxury 
and idleness? Was not the numerical and physical strength of the 
self-supporting Northern States always equal to the demands of 
labor to propel any industrial enterprise, for a space of 250 years ? 

There always has been, and now is, a sufficient number of citizen 
men and women in the United States to build all railroads, propel 
all industrial institutions, and perform all domestic service, as the 
increasing wants of the country may demand, without employing, 
servile labor. As a healthy demand always creates supply, capital 
can afford to employ the citizen and pay wages that will remunerate 
the investment and reward the workman with American comforts 
that will bless the country with a prosperous civilization. 

If corresponding efforts and inducements had been made and 
held out to encourage European labor the last fifteen years that are 
now made to import the pagans, our country would have filled 
with desirable citizens, who spend their earnings among us—instead 
of barbarous serfs, who carry their earnings from us—instead of 
poverty, discord, and strife with proprietors, there would have been 
peace, prosperity, and “ good will ” among the rich and the poor. 
This would have been in harmony with the genius of our republican 
institutions ; while the coolie trade is fast drifting us to the slavery 
and despotisms our fathers came here to avoid. 

If cheap labor did not work well nor end well in the South, by 
what reasoning do you expect to make it work well all over the 
land? We have tried the cheap, servile labor about fifteen years, 
and find that the new system, though a temporary benefit to a few, 
works just like the old system of chattel slavery upon the morals 
and finances of the whole community, and if continued must termin¬ 
ate in the same way, because the system is founded in a selfish, 
covetous love of wealth that ignores the public welfare. The greedy 
monopolies have substituted these pagans to do the work on the 
roads, farms, and workshops ; not because there was a necessity , 
but for the difference between the wages of a serf and a citizen. 

If the importers and employers could make so many more mil¬ 
lions than anybody else in this traffic, without injury to the laboring 




35 


population of the whole commonwealth, we might be content; but 
when we discover that the monopolies intend to accumulate all 
these millions by making the whole country just that much poorer, 
the tax-paying people of this Coast are rising up in self-defense. 

The only proper method of opposing a local monopoly is to erect 
* a similar establishment on the other side of the street; but when 
great capital is organized to control general merchandise—and all 
public enterprise—so as to rob the people of their earnings and 
prevent the administration of justice, by swapping the citizen for a 
serf, it is more than the international treaty with China contem¬ 
plated, and more than an independent people will submit to. 

If the supply and demands of market operate to cheapen the 
citizen’s wages and productions, because all other things in market 
are correspondingly low, there is no harm done, providing the citi¬ 
zen is still employed to do the work at some price. But if we em¬ 
ploy a cheap, servile labor to propel our industrial enterprises, 
railroads, etc., that necessarily excludes the citizen from the same 
employments, it is not only a total eclipse of the public morals 
and financial prosperity, but it retards the progress of all local en¬ 
terprises, and prevents the administration of justice itself. 
f It would not be very strange that a people having no experience 
in cheap, servile labor that impoverished the citizen while it en¬ 
riched the monopolies, should be deceived by them ; but when we 
remember that the old African slave traders enriched themselves 
and monopolized every branch of local tra'de by the same traffic, it 
is surprising that we, with all our boasted wisdom and experience, 
should allow ourselves to be so grossly swindled with a system of 
slavery that is more outlandishly dishonorable and corrupting to 
the morals and disastrous to the whole country than the first. 

Is it good statesmanship to import an equal number of pagan 
men ancl women to occupy the condition of those whom we have 
just emancipated, ultimately destined to wear the same chains, re¬ 
ceive the same lash, reduce the citizen to the same poor white trash, 
and end in another slaveholders’ rebellion ? 

When our industries and public improvements are propelled and 
built with citizen labor, the people are sure to grow rich and the 
country enjoy general prosperity. The people of this coast are 
public-spirited, but they can better wait for a more slow and 
natural development of our industries, as our fathers did, as the 
settlement of the country demands, and the citizen can do the 
work, than to permit a combination of capital to spring these 
things upon us prematurely by substituting serfs for the citizen to 
do the work at half price, at the enormous sacrifice of all perma- 
ne.nt prosperity, homes, and sources of living. We want railroads, 
but we want freedom more. We want progress, but we do not 
think it congenial with our free institutions to displace the citizen 
for cheap, servile labor to do the nation’s work. If you pick an 
apple before it is ripe, it will wither; so if our industries and in- 






36 - 


ternal improvements are prematurely developed by a class of 
laborers, at a price below that which would be required to support 
a citizen, the national prosperity is in danger of a disastrous col¬ 
lapse. The idleness, vice, and consequent downfall of all people 
who have tried it is sufficient warning for the citizens of this re¬ 
public to allow no class of labor to be employed to develop its in¬ 
dustries that is not equal and eligible to all the Constitution guar¬ 
antees to them. 

Before “ cheap labor” was abolished in the South, capital ruled 
the citizen’s labor to a starving point; but when slavery was con¬ 
demned, citizen labor forced capital to pay living wages. 

There was a time when, in California, if a working man should 
complain of too low wages, his request would receive a respectful 
consideration, because labor was in a prosperous competition with 
capital. But since Chinese serfs have been imported to develop 
the mines, build the railroads, work on the farms, in the manufac¬ 
tories and kitchens, capital is ruling labor to the starving point of 
pagan living and morals, or no work at all. Now, if you utter a 
word of complaint, you are insulted with the quick response, “ Go 
to the devil, sir ; I can hire a Chinaman for half price.” And 
they will continue to do so till you go to the polls and prohibit the 
importation of heathen serfs as you did African slaves. If these 
serfs are not chattels exactly, they are virtually in the condition of 
slaves, and will always do any ordinary, and, fast as they acquire 
knowledge, any extraordinary work cheaper than you can, and live 
like a Christian. There is no alternative ; you must get rid of 
these pagan serfs, or they will bring you to poverty and de¬ 
basement. 

The vot.e of California against the “coolie trade” on this coast 
would not speak for the nation, we know ; but it would be an un¬ 
mistakable voice that would make the monopolies now importing 
the coolies cast a shorter shadow, to say the least. We do not 
expect the traffic in this new system of slavery will cease imme¬ 
diately. If it took our fathers over two hundred years to remove 
the first eclipse of freedom, we may be more than satisfied if we 
sit under the meridian sunshine of a free country in the year 1876, 
“to celebrate our first centennial anniversary. 

To accomplish this, we must pledge ourselves that we will 
carry our protest to the ballot-box, without regard to old political 
prejudices. We must resolve to agitate the subject till we have 
combined the strength of labor and good morals against this com¬ 
bination of capital, that we may break off the yoke in a political 
contest some time. We are now trying to do this by a petition to 
Congress to modify the treaty. But if the present Administration 
refuses to hear us ; if it permits the system of coolie labor to con¬ 
tinue, we must unite in an independent political effort to create an 
Administration who will prohibit their importation. We must con¬ 
vince the entire laboring classes that the cheap coolie system of 




37 


labor, with its counterpart of worthless women, is the slavish cham 
that now binds them down under the aggregated capital of un¬ 
principled monopolies. Petitions to Congress will do much to 
rouse the public sentiment; but the only effectual power that can 
break the galling yoke of coolie labor is a majority vote at the 
* ballot-box. 

We have societies for the protection of labor, and they once did 
some good. But these societies afford no more protection to the 
laboring citizen so long as the coolie trade continues. If all the 
old labor protective societies and associations in the country, 
towns, and cities, would unite with the people against the monopo¬ 
lies in every voting precinct, and remain faithful to the pledge, 
they would dispatch the enemy in double-quick time. 

We do not wish to be understood as saying that the cheap labor 
system is the only means used by the monopolies to oppress the 
people, but it certainly is the power that makes them independent 
of the laboring citizen. If all other grievances complained of were 
removed, and this remained, we would still be under their control. 
If Congress should regulate the freight charges and fares on the 
railroads so as to please the farmers and do justice to the traveling 
y public ; if Congress should make the Mobiliers pay back every 
dollar they have stolen, grant no more subsidies, permit no man to 
own over 160 acres of land, give an eight-hour law, and withhold 
the license to sell intoxicating drinks, what would all this profit the 
people if Congress still permitted this combination of capital to 
import an indefinite number of coolies to do all their work and 
everybody’s work cheaper than the citizen can do it? With this 
single advantage of cheap labor that excludes the citizen from the 
same work, the monopolies would have the inside track of you for 
all that. Remove all other abuses complained of, but continue the 
coolie trade, and the monopolies are able to grind the face of the 
poor citizen, because they are independent of his labor. The 
coolie trade continued would enable them to still cast their dark 
mantle of poverty and shame over all the political, commercial, and 
industrial institutions of America, and sink the ship of State with 
all on board. 

Therefore, as the working people of this nation went out and 
gave freedom to the chattel slave, so let the irresistible conflict 
now going on end only with a total prohibition of cheap coolie men 
and women. The ballot-box is the only grand national lever by 
which all the social and political evils that affect the persons, prop¬ 
erty, and prosperity of the whole people can be renloved. When 
the laboring power of this coast shall rise in the majesty of their 
united strength against the power of capital, and speak the word, 
the work is done. 

2 * 




i 


38 


A REPUBLICAN GOVERNMENT CAN NOT EXIST 
LONG, AFTER IT BEGINS TO TOLERATE ANY 
SPECIES OF SERVILE LABOR. 

The pedestal upon which the free industrial and civilizing insti¬ 
tutions of our country stands, is a complete triumph of an equal 
government over slavery, or any kind of peonage that can answer 
as a substitute for the citizen in the vocation of labor. To be suc¬ 
cessful it must place all men, who come under its control as per¬ 
manent occupants of the soil, equal before the judicial law. This 
principle of equality in the administration of the government is 
made a subject of reform in the Chinese Treaty, because it permits 
the importation of a servile 1'ace who are to reap all the benefits of 
soil and labor by eliminating the franchised laboring citizen. 
Newspapers East and West, and through all the interior, are strug¬ 
gling to curtail the power of gigantic railway corporations because 
they threaten to destroy the equalization of commerce ; but little 
or nothing is said about the importation of coolies to do the work 
of these corporations and all other industrial enterprises cheaper 
than a citizen. This system is what gives the monopolies power 
to control commerce and legislation. Once fairly established it 
v/ill destroy the equality of labor and overthrow the republican in¬ 
stitutions of the United States as the northern nations of Europe 
subverted and destroyed the Roman Empire. 

If an indefinite number of Europeans come among us, they add 
to the number of laborers and increase the demand for more ; they 
equalize the price of labor and commerce ; they increase the price 
of real estate and demand for all kinds of merchandise ; they in¬ 
crease the citizen population, build up our institutions of wealth, 
learning, and civilization. But when a pagan serf comes, he sets 
aside a citizen and creates no demand for another; he decreases 
the price of labor, real estate, and the demands of commerce ; he 
decreases the citizen population and civilizing institutions. The 
college, common school, and rural homesteads of intelligent labor¬ 
ers disappear before him. We exchange a citizen for a serf, a 
crown for a hod, and a palace for a cell. We exchange progress, 
prosperity, and freedom, for ignorance, adversity, and human op¬ 
pression. We exchange independence for povertv, cleanliness for 
filth, health for disease, virtue for vice, Christianity for idolatry, 
and the reverse of every good thing conceivable, without receiving 
or imparting the slightest benefit to ourselves or anybody else, but 
the importers and pagans. 

The anti-coolie people of this coast have no war to wage with 
legitimate schemes of speculation, but the importation of cheap 
servile labor seems to us to be a more menacing attack upon the 


\ 




perpetuity of a free republic than all other abuses of steamship 
and railroad corporations put together. We have an abundant and 
dear bought experience, that all people inhabiting and reaping the 
benefits of the same country jnust have equal political rights to 
“life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” or tnere will be a 
higher and lower grade of society, with serfs or slaves between 
the two. Our late example in the Southern States is sufficient 
proof that we cannot reconcile the existence of servile labor with 
a government of social and political equality. 

The settlement of America began with a system of cheap labor 
imported from Africa. This detestable traffic commenced about 
1620, and continued under a limited monarchy without creating 
much opposition, except in the New England Colonies, down to 
1776. But after the American independence was declared, and we 
became a free republic, the system of cheap labor and the right of 
property in man began to create a friction in the wheels of govern¬ 
ment that culminated in the entire overthrow of slavery at the 
enormous expense of two thousand five hundred million dollars, 
twenty-five million of property, and five hundred thousand lives 
in the year 1864. But while the death knell of African slavery 
was still heard dying out in the distance, while the footprints of 
their countrymen were still fresh round the graves of the patriot 
dead, and before the nation had put off the garments of mourning, 
another class of cheap .servile laborers was imported from China, 
sanctioned by both governments, to displace the citizen and do 
the nation’s work. If the citizens do not prohibit their importation 
and immigration in time, long before the servile races of Asiashall 
outnumber the poor white trash of America, the nation will be 
deluged with another revolution more bloody and costly than the 
first. 

With this little scrap of past history and prophetic dream of the 
future, let us glance at some of the characteristics of these cheap 
laborers who are to exclude our countrymen from the ordinary em¬ 
ployments and industries of the' commonwealth. If we judge the 
whole people by their representatives already among us, we must 
suppose the Chinese are a nation of serfs and harlots. It is a 
query to many why China should be an exception in these particu¬ 
lars. We have read all Mongolian books available, and if we 
could unravel this national enigma, the success of our cause would 
not demand it. It seems that this sudden uprising of philanthropic 
souls to save the heathen, does not extend to the virtuous and 
well-to-do Chinamen, if there are any such in the Celestial King¬ 
dom. Some of our clergymen tell us that Providence is sending 
these pagans here to develop the natural resources and wealth of 
this great, free, and Christian nation. But the steamships and six 
Chinese companies, who are employed to import them, seem to think 
the only class demanded to do this work are serfs and harlots. 

However, it is a matter of perfect indifference to us by what pro- 




40 


cess these people inherited their national peonage and immorality. 
It is riot-important that we should know whether their customs are 
similar to the Israelites in the days of Moses ; or whether they are 
the descendents of Shem ; or whether thousands of criminals are 
sold as slaves for their crimes, instead of execution ; or whether 
creditors are allowed to sell their debtors for money; or whether 
the poor often sell themselves ; or whether husbands buy and sell 
their wives ; or whether parents sell their daughters, while very 
young. It is immaterial how these hordes of worthless men and 
women get here. For, if when at home they are free as Ameri¬ 
cans, and pure as angels, the moment they are imported as servile 
labor to do the work of this democratic Union, cheaper than a citi¬ 
zen can do it, they destroy the equality of a free republic ; they re¬ 
verse the order of progress and civilization among the laboring, 
voting, tax-paying population, and in time will reduce them to a 
social and financial condition with themselves. Alarmed by the 
apprehension of approaching evil, the working men of the nation 
are beginning to question the authority of any parties to import a 
class of servile laborers, because it destroys the equality of labor, 
trade, commerce, and an equal government; it practically denies 
that all men are born free and equal to enjoy the natural rights con¬ 
ferred by the Creator ; it threatens to overthrow the freedom of the 
Gospel and our republican policy of equal rights in the privileges 
and administration of the government by an established peonage 
or slavery. The intelligent people despise the principle that would 
build up a wealth and power upon the credulity and ignorance of a 
superstitious race, by sacrificing the freedom and happiness of 
their own countrymen. Their souls are filled with righteous indig¬ 
nation at the prospective tyranny of this low, trickish conspiracy to 
bring a free and equal government into the bondage, cruelties, and 
degradation of another system of cheap labor. Do you let men 
who are under bondage to Satan come into your church ; but if the 
Gospel is free to all , why not? Do you admit slaves into a repub¬ 
lican government; but if the privileges of our country are free to 
all, why not admit the coolies ? Simply because they are idolators 
and in the condition of slaves , and would corrupt a?id pervert the 
foundation principles upon which the government is built. If by a 
free government we mean an unlimited license for everybody to 
come and go and do as they please, irrespective of character or 
condition, of what utility are laws and constitutional guarantees 
for the protection of its permanent citizens ? 

It may be true that there is no right of property in these coolie 
men directly, as a freehold, but the effects of their presence and 
employment in the condition of serfs upon the whole country are 
the same as chattel slaves. Our experience proves that the new 
system answers the same purpose as the old one. Even pious old 
anti-slavery people take it into their social system as the silly fish 
takes down the bait without knowing that the bearded hook is 


✓ 




there. It would be strange if an experience of two hundred and 
liity years in this kind of labor-saving machinery would not devel¬ 
op something new; and still more strange if a skillful physician 
could not prepare a nostrum that would not be offensive to the 
stomachs of weak patients. The coolie is more acceptable to the 
master because the same amount of labor, if not more and better, 
all things considered, is obtained with much less expense and 
larger profits. It is more acceptable than the old system, because 
it can become more universal without rousing the jealousy of the 
fanatical old friends of equal rights. 

We hesitate not to say that the imported coolies are virtually 
slaves to their superiors, and the women are actually slaves to the 
men, bought with money, and sold at pleasure. That part of the 
Chinese population in America who are not imported by money 
corporations hold the same relations to their brethren who are serfs 
as the freed negroes in the North and South held to the slaves. 
Socially and politically they are members of the inferior or degraded 
race. Laisun, with all his wealth, learning, and accomplishments, 
good and regular standing in a grave Puritan church, can aspire to 
no more than his ignoble brother in a California mine, or South 
Adams manufactory. Socially and politically they belong to the 
cheap-labor class, from which neither learning, wealth, nor Chris¬ 
tian courtesy can ever redeem them. 

Now, the anti-coolie people of this Union declare that the tolera¬ 
tion of such a race of servile laborers among us is incompatible 
with the principles and safety of a republican government. The 
inevitable sequence of the coolie trade in a democratic republic is 
a retrogressive tendency of the laboring citizen toward the condi¬ 
tion of the coolie. Hence, we should modify the treaty with China 
so as to prohibit the importation or immigration of any race that can 
not be brought with safety up to the standard of American citizen¬ 
ship. We do not claim that the opinions of those who work for a 
living are entitled to more implicit credence than the opinions of 
those who live on the speculations of capital ; but we oppose the 
employment of any class of persons to do the work of this nation, 
who are not eligible to the equal iranchises of the Government, 
upon the principle of self-defense. The old slave-holding monopo¬ 
lies plead the same necessity for “ cheap labor ” to make the produc¬ 
tions of rice, sugar, and cotton profitable, as are now employed to 
make the sugar of beets, wine of grape, salt marsh land, household 
service, farming, manufacturing, etc., profitable ; and we have seen 
the result. Since God has wrought out so great a deliverance for 
us, and since the half-civilized nations are struggling to be free 
from the coolie systems of oppression, why should we put on their 
cast-off chains and return so soon like a sow that was washed to 
her wallowing in the mire. 

The railroad corporations and pro-coolie advocates say, “ These 
people are not slaves, they are coolies What is that to the people 




42 


if they are not fit to be citizens, and yet take a citizen’s place. If 
they answer the same purpose, and produce the same results as a 
slave, what relief does it afford the excluded, degraded, and im¬ 
poverished citizen to call his successful rival a coolie ! Can you 
change the nature of an institution with a new name affixed? Is 
it not the same old coon ? ” Would the change of name destroy the 
sweetness of a rose ; or, would a skunk emit a more pleasing aroma 
if you called him a me-phi-tis-americana ? Are the results of chat¬ 
tel slaves any more pleasing to the people, or safe to the country, 
because it is dubbed with the specious name of coolie ?. The im¬ 
porters tell us that the probability of their ever'becoming chattel 
slaves, and producing the same results, is a mere conjecture. But 
they forget that all past chattel slavery began in the same mild way, 
just as all drunkards are made by moderate drinking. We do not 
pretend to deny that there is a shade of difference between the late 
African slave, and the present Chinese serf but in regard to social 
condition and political equality they are both the same, and answer 
the same ends. Close observers believe the coolie is an improve¬ 
ment upon the chattel slave in favor of the proprietor, while he is a 
hundred-fold more detrimental to the commonwealth, and dangerous 
to our republican institutions ; for, as the slove was only a spot of 
leprosy, the serf threatens to cover the whole body politic with his 
loathsome disease. 

The primary object of the anti-monopoly movement is to nip the 
coolie trade in the bud. If a seed sprouts and becomes a plant, 
you might set your foot down and crush the life out of it; but if it 
is permitted to draw nourishment from the soil and grow, it will 
continue to expand till its limbs and foliage tower above and casta 
shadow beyond all other trees in the forest. Our fathers tried to 
crush the life out of slavery when it was a little twig, but they 
failed. The sprout drew nourishment from Congress till its trunk 
towered above constitutional law, and sent its branches high up 
into the heavens. The people of California tried to kill the coolie 
trade when it first sprouted, but they failed. If we continue to give 
it constitutional nourishment, it requires no Daniel to interpret the 
downward fall of our republican institutions. If the pride and op¬ 
pression of this nation goes up once more into the heavens for ven¬ 
geance, think it not strange if the people wade in their own blood, 
and our governors learn to eat straw like an ox. 

How can we civilize and Americanize these people if we justify 
their importation as slaves and harlots ? Our Southern Christian 
fathers tried this, until it came to pass that the very embodiment of 
Christianity in the Southern States was in the slave population ; 
still they were slaves , and corrupted the citizen. If we cannot do 
unto the coolie as we would that he should do to us ; if we cannot 
give him the opportunity to seek after and possess all that the 
Creator has given us ; if you cannot show him all the way up to the 
wicket gate where the burden will fall from his back ; if we cannot 




43 


safely make him a citizen—let him stay at home, where God made 
him, and try to improve his condition without injury to himself or 
any body else. If the Government continues to import these peo¬ 
ple till each State in the Union is supplied to the same extent that 
each Southern State was with slaves before the Rebellion, one of 
-r two things will surely take place. The displaced and demoralized 
citizens will rise with the serfs, and declare all parties equal in the 
government, or the pro-coolie monopolies will have gained such an 
ascendency over the judicial and military powers, that a religious 
and political aristocracy will cry out, “ Vive Emperor !” to some 
forthcoming railroad king. 


THE REMEDY. 

In conversation with a distinguished editor, the other day, he said, 
“What are you going to do about the Chinese treaty ? ” We are 
going to modify it so as to prohibit the coolie trade. But you 
Christians told the Chinamen a few years ago, If they would let 
you come there with your Bible and commerce, they might come 
here with their Josh and tea. Now you are the first to complain, 
and propose a change. This same editor, a few years ago, was a 
warm friend of the railroad corporation ; now his antagonism is so 
bitter that the railroad will not allow his paper to be sold on the 
cars. A few years ago this editor was a warm friend of a distin¬ 
guished Senator ; now his opposition is equally strong. This 
change of opinion is made for good reasons. When the railroads 
and the noble Senator did what he thought w r as right, he sustained 
them.; when wrong, he opposed them. A French Senator accused 
Bismarck of doing now directly contrary to what he advised fifteen 
year's ago. Whereupon, Bismarck replied, “ Sir, I should be sorry 
if I had not learned something new in fifteen years.” Have we 
been making improvement in art, science, commerce, and agricul¬ 
ture the last fifteen years without learning something about popular 
government ? If that which we thought was right works wrong, we 
must oppose it. This same editor appears to be in favor of the 
coolie trade, and yet it is a greater advantage to the monopolies 
and injury to the people than all other abuses he seeks to correct. 
It is true that the threatening local evils of the “ Great Anaconda” 
ought to be considered and corrected ; but when we overlook and 
treat lightly that insidious, rising power of the servile race that, 
like a corroding cancer, is eating out the very vitals of the nation, 
it looks like tithing mint, rue, and all manner of herbs, while we 
neglect the weightier matters employed by the monopolies to de- 





44 


stroy the equalization of commerce and overthrow our freedom. 
It is proper to look back and see where we erred to avoid mistakes 
in time to come. It is proper to look into the future and judge by 
the past what might be. But no consideration of outrageous dis¬ 
criminations and exorbitant freight charges, domestic money cor¬ 
porations, or abuses of public trust; no consideration of subsidies, 
landed monopolies, reform services, local option bills, or Goat Island 
disputes, can excuse the nation for overlooking that which threatens 
its dissolution, or neglecting the present duty we owe to our pos¬ 
terity. The present duty is to settle the great question of the 
Chinese invasion, and decide whether the inheritance of freedom 
and means of living we have received from our fathers shall be 
handed down to our sons as we received it, or whether we will dis¬ 
inherit our sons and hand it over to the heathen. 

“ But the abrogation of the Chinese treaty is an affair of the 
whole nation , and to change it you must move the nation.” We 
know that and have made arrangements accordingly. Who is the 
nation but the people ? And how is the nation to be moved ? 
What power moved the nation to subdue African slavery ? By 
what power is it kept in subjection ? If we had power to effect an 
international exchange with China that in fifteen years we ascertain 
works evil to both parties, have the two nations no power to recon¬ 
struct ? Has Congress power to regulate the great railroad corpo¬ 
rations that attempt to control the legislation and commerce of 
the nation but destitute of power to protect the people from an 
entire otherthrow by a horde of barbarians, simply because it made 
a mistake fifteen years ago ? No ; this nation as well as nature has 
power to recuperate and heal itself. To move the nation on this 
subject we must appeal directly to the judgment of the toiling, tax- 
paying people. To move the nation we must create a thorough 
opposition to the coolie traffic in the mind of the producing pub¬ 
lic that will remove the cause, and the effect will cease. 

In this work of reform we act constitutionally . The Constitu¬ 
tion condemns every species of slavery, and makes all its franchises 
possible to every man under the protection of its flag. And yet 
the Congress of the United States permits and aids six Chinese 
companies and the steam-ship monopolies to violate the Consti¬ 
tution and dishonor the flag, by importing serfs and thousands of 
base women who are held as chattel slaves. Are not the oblffa- 

o 

tions of universal brotherhood all the same ? Why then does this 
administration send over Iron Clads to protect the Haytians from 
human oppression, while it sends a hundred fold more steam-ships 
and clippers to import the Pagans to compete with our citizen pop¬ 
ulation in the avocations of labor, knowing they are serfs, and can 
work for half less than a citizen ? Are we bound by the stronger 
ties of brotherhood to esteem ignorant and superstitious Haytians as 
men , while'we look down upon the Mongolian and treat him as a 
serf? If it is not safe to make the heathen of any country our equals 




45 


is it safe to make them our inferiors ? Therefore upon this incon- 
trovertable principle of constitutional equality among all the peo¬ 
ple we set up our plea of self-preservation. The final triumph of 
universal, civil, and religious freedom, over ecclesiastical and politi¬ 
cal despotism, is, the prevalence of moral and political equality 
n among all the people who do the work and reap the benefits of a 
democratic government. This vital principle of equality is di¬ 
vinely bound up with a square and manly offer to every occupant 
of the American soil the largest opportunities that the Constitu¬ 
tion guarantees to us, or a total prohibition of all races whom it 
would not be safe to put upon a social and political equality with 
ourselves. If we permit the idolators of Asia to establish their 
temples of worship and come in equal competition with us in the 
work and means of living, as se?fs , our destiny is inevitably linked 
with theirs. No republican government or Christian system of 
morals can long survive the continued innovation and equal com¬ 
petition of pagan idolatry and servile labor. Therefore, logically , 
as our Constitution begins with a declaration of universal, religious, 
and political freedom to all itsinhabitants , the people should watch 
the first inception of any system of labor which, if let alone, may 
. grow into a system of religious and political despotism. Is there 
no cause for alarm, or a total prohibition of all inferior races, to 
parry off “ The coming Struggle ” that like a bursting water spout 
threatens to wash us into another sea of infamy and universal 
contempt ? 


THE TIME HAS COME TO REPORT PROGRESS. 

The importance of prohibiting the coolie trade is not local but 
universal. As the trial of this effort to substitute the Chinamen 
for the citizen began on the Pacific Coast, it is proper that we 
should report progress to the Eastern States and the world. The 
Atlantic States and perhaps all the world are interested in this new 
trial to mix up our civil and religious institutions with practical 
heathenism and servile labor. It is said the proof of a pudding is 
in eating it. Our Eastern friends cannot enter into the feelings 
and rise to a full appreciation of the anti-coolie movement, as those 
who have been ground under the withering effects of this servile or 
cheap labor for twenty years. We are able to report what we know 
about farming with the prodigality of cheap labor. We can report 
what we know about its effect upon the citizen working classes, and 
the influence of Chinese women upon the public morals. Our 
knowledge is so matured that the country calls upon us to set an 
example of public approval or condemnation. While as a State 





46 


we cannot decide this matter for the Eastern States, we may use 
our freedom to commence agitating and voting, before our Atlantic 
shopmates get their political eyes open to see the coming struggle. 
If this Coast is ready to vote and report on the coolie trade, why 
wait for neighboring States ? Why not rise and report progress at 
the polls the next election, and let our neighbors know how we 
like it. Such an example might lay the foundation and prepare 
the way for all other States to introduce preventive measures. It 
is therefore both wise and expedient that where the experiment 
of servile labor and thousands of Chinese prostitutes has been 
fairly tested in our towns, cities, and country, there let the remedy 
be first-applied at the polls to ascertain if anything is found want¬ 
ing in the coolie system to promote the general good of the whole 
country. 

We once had an abundance of citizen labor to do all the work in 
California. The coolie trade drove these laborers from us. Now, 
it is said, “ We cannot afford to check the influx of cheap labor 
till we can fill their places with Europeans again.” But what if the 
Chinamen come faster than citizens ? And if when the coolie 
comes he drives out as many foreigners who cannot compete with 
him in wages, how long will it take for Americans to fill the place 
of Chinamen ? Shall we use moral suasion ? You may as well 
“ Sing psalms to dead horses,” expecting to make Christians of 
them as to persuade those who are importing and employing China¬ 
men to abandon their money-making business to accommodate the 
working citizen. We may labor with them from year to year as we 
did the slaveholder before the Rebellion ; we may persuade them 
by all the motives of good morals, of Christianity, and love of 
country to the end of time, and they will remain as unmoved as a 
rumseller at the rehearsal of the crime and suffering produced" by 
his murderous traffic. No power outside of an edict from the in¬ 
jured people at the polls can fill the places of servile labor with 
intelligent working citizens. The Congress that made the Chinese 
Treaty was a reflection of the public mind, and we call upon the 
people to correct the mistake. We desire that the ability of navi¬ 
gators and moneyed corporations to take advantage of that treaty, 
so as to injure the public welfare, should be removed, while we 
preserve the integrity and good faith of the nation in our commer¬ 
cial relations with China. If we have power to create international 
law we have power to correct whatever in its practical working 
proves injurious to the public good. 

There can be no doubt but the treaty permitting coolie importa¬ 
tion was entered into (by the people) with the most philanthropic 
and benevolent intentions to promote the wealth and tranquility of 
both parties. It called out the united wisdom of our best states¬ 
men, but in the blindness of their political vision they could not 
foresee the perplexing evils that would result to the citizen laborer, 
the corruption of the public morals, the check on European immi- 




47 


gration, and the paralyzing of all home industries, to enrich a-few 
covetous men who would take advantage of its “sin of ignorance.” 
The treaty with China was incomplete ; for, soon after slavery was 
abolished, it permitted the same class of men to land on our shores 
one hundred and fifty thousand serfs to be substituted for citizen 
laborers, and when we were already overrun with infamous houses, 
they scattered all over our Cpast a swarm of pagan prostitutes. 
But it a farmer leaves his bars down, whaf.cause has he to com¬ 
plain if the hogs get in and eat up the corn. The people are the 
farmers in this case, and must put up the bars they have left down. 

They only are responsible for the presence of these serfs, and 
they only can undo the mischief they have done. If the working 
men of this nation, who are three fourths of the law-making popu¬ 
lation, let this traffic go on without check, they will be u par tic eps 
princeps ” to their own downfall. Their silence will give consent 
to the coolie trade. Their inactivity will stimulate capital to deluge 
the whole land wtth servile labor and disreputable women, and in 
time there will be more capital represented in this beastly trade 
than is employed in all the manufacturing and other items of com¬ 
merce put together. 

Now, suppose such a state of things should take place in every 
State east of the mountains, it requires no statesman to see that 
Congress could not control such a monstrous monopoly, having 
power to influence the popular elections. It could scarcely do it 
now with a remonstrating petition from every State in the Union. 
The servile labor system would be so interwoven with all produc¬ 
tive enterprises, exert such an influence in Congressional elections, 
and hence over those who are elected, that a minority of dependent 
working citizens would be under their control by intimidation, as 
they are now on all the lines of railroad and industries, on this 
Coast where Chinamen are employed. In that event the coolie, in¬ 
stead of cotton, would be king over the whole country, over judicial 
courts, over elections, and in every part of human society, so uni¬ 
versal and oppressive that there would be no hope of deliverance 
short of another insurrection. 

Intelligent editors tell us that the present Congress represents 
this monopoly, and not the people ; that the President and Con¬ 
gress are opposed to meddling with the Chinese treaty now that it 
has become a part of constitutional law. Whether this is true or 
not, if the people were obliged to take the eldest son of General 
Grant, and the son of each honorable Senator to be our next Presi¬ 
dent and Congress, the fact that the present chief magistrate and 
Congress favored the monopoly would assume a more serious im¬ 
portance. But, as the governing power is yet in the hands of the 
body politic, and every citizen a factor of that ; and three fourths 
of the factors injured citizens, when they see the spirit of slavery 
and a moneyed aristocracy rising up in any direction it is their duty 
to suppress it. If the President, Congress, and Constitution have 




48 


no power to control the rising despotism, then the standing army 
of this nation, rising from their plows and workshops, will proceed 
to make a President, Congress, and Constitution who will do what 
the people bid. 


FALSE INDUCEMENTS HELD OUT TO THE PEO 
PLE BY THE RAILROAD COMPANIES TO GET 
THEIR MONEY AND PATRONAGE. 


The monopoly makes more money on the passage and freight of 
coolies, here and back again, together with the amount deducted 
from the citizen labor, than on all the freights, fares, and other earn¬ 
ings of railroading and steam navigation put together, while the 
public, who are excluded from their employment, are impoverished 
to the full amount of their gain. 

It is said that facts are stubborn things, and figures do not lie. 
Let us suppose a case and look at some of the figures. Stanford 
& Co. propose to build a railroad from Ogden to San Francisco. 
The charter and right of way is obtained, with a subsidy of the 
people’s money. Still they make a poor mouth. The people of 
Placer County donate two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, by 
direct taxation, (gold bonds), and other counties in proportion. The 
road is to be built in four years. Suppose they employ three thou¬ 
sand Chinamen, instead of Americans or foreigners. They would 
pay the citizens ac least two dollars a day, and the Chinaman one 
dollar. Allowing twenty-five working days in each month, it would 
give them a clear saving of seventy-five thousand dollars per month. 
Multiply this sum by twelve and you have nine hundred thousand 
dollars per year. Divide this between twenty proprietors and they 
have the cheerful sum of forty-five thousand dollars each for one 
year taken from the pockets of three thousand conntrymen to fill 
the pockets of twenty railroad men. Multiply this by four (the 
time to build the road), and each man has one hundred and eighty 
thousand dollars clear profit upon the single item of difference be¬ 
tween the wages of the coolie and the citizen, when the work is 
completed. All told, the company have saved three million, six 
hundred thousand dollars. 

This immense advantage to the company could be endured if it 
did not effectually exclude at least ten thousand men, women, and 
children living along the line and in the territories through which 
the road runs. Many of these people voted large subsidies, gave 
their own right of way and influence, with a promise and expecta¬ 
tion of doing the work. Now if the company substitute three 





49 


thousand Chinamen for Americans and Europeans, the former 
leave only one third of their earnings here, and send two thirds to 
China each day, they will send six hundred thousand dollars each 
year, and two million four hundred thousand dollars gold coin to 
China when the road is completed that would have been expended 
- to increase the wealth and improve our own country if citizens had 
been employed to do the work. 

If you apply these estimates to the Texas Pacific Road, the 
Northern Pacific Road, the Oregon and all other railroads now 
running and under contemplation, the results would be proportion¬ 
ately the same, if the “cheap labor” is substituted for that of citi¬ 
zens. Then if you add to these enormous sums saved in the item 
of difference between the wages of the excluded citizen and the 
serfs, the fact that they have deprived at least three times as many 
citizens as they have employed serfs from the equivalent benefits 
of the public improvements, it would have been better for the States 
and Territories through which these roads now do and are ex¬ 
pected to run, if these “ Railroad Kings ” had never been born. 

Now look at the Pacific Coast ten years before a railroad was 
built. So long as we continued to do our own work (without 
l slaves) and provide our own conveyance to market, the demand for 
work increased the demand for citizen laborers. The increase of 
laborers increased the demand for merchandise for home and for¬ 
eign markets, consequently there was an increase in the citizen 
population—a slow, sure, and permanent increase in the value of 
real estate, learning, morals, and general improvement. We had 
plenty of men to do the work as the business of the country de¬ 
manded, and plenty of capital to pay living wages. Importers, 
merchants, farmers, and working men were all getting rich and 
comparatively happy. The same result on a more grand and re¬ 
munerative scale to the public would have been produced and per¬ 
petrated, if the company had employed citizens instead of serfs to 
do the work. There would have been no computing the wealth of 
California and Oregon, if one hundred thousand i\mericans and 
Europeans with their wives, and children, and dependents had 
been encouraged to build these railroads, instead of pagans. 

But the result is before us. A corresponding loss of citizen pop¬ 
ulation, a decrease in the demand and value of real estate in our 
towns, cities, and country. Intelligent sober working men have 
left with their families, and serfs are employed instead to do the 
ordinary and much of the extraordinary work. All permanent im¬ 
provement outside of the railroads, or those who employ China¬ 
men or possess great wealth, is hampered. Poor men have no en¬ 
couragement to buy and improve small homesteads, because the 
price of their labor has been* reduced to the wages of the heathen. 
Freight, fares, and taxes are increased on the people till they are 
alarmed and exasperated almost to a panic. After the roads are 
built the serfs are still employed and the citizen excluded. They 




50 


are scraping, gleaning, sluicing, and panning out the natural re¬ 
sources of our country and all departments of enterprise, till they 
are ready to depart, leaving only their filth, not even the bones of 
dead men to enrich the soil. Instead of enriching our country, 
save the private interests of a few speculators, we are many thou¬ 
sands of people less—and many million of dollars worse off than 
we would have been without the railroads. 

All intelligent men now living, who were twenty-five years of age 
twenty years ago, remember well that the strongest inducement 
held out to the public, and kept before the people by politicians to 
obtain subsidies for the overland railroad, was the fact that a “ way 
would be opened for farmers to settle all along on the road, with 
opportunity to pre-empt and buy the rich land of that unknown re¬ 
gion cheap.” And what was still more encouraging to the people, 
the railroads would furnish employment for thousands of citizens 
to construct the work and create a home market for their produce. 
Besides, all along the roads would spring up farms, orchards, towns, 
and a thrifty population with cheap fare and easy transportation to 
any part of this vast domain. But to our serious regret and incon¬ 
venience these advantages have not been realized in Placer County, 
and to no great extent anywhere on this Coast. Why? Simply 
because they employed serfs, instead of citizens as they agreed, to 
do a larger part of the work at half price. Now the road is com¬ 
pleted they are rapidly displacing the sons of those who voted sub¬ 
sidies from every department of labor on the entire route, and on 
all other roads where the cheap labor can be employed. The mil¬ 
lions of acres of land that properly belong to the people are adver¬ 
tised at such high rates that no ordinary farmer with little means 
can afford to buy them, while the charges on freights and fares are 
so extravagant that the Railroad Kings swallow up the small farm¬ 
ers in the whole State as a whale gulps down a school of little 
minnows. If an independent editor or farmer dares to utter a word 
of remonstrance, the company do not allow the paper to be sold, or 
the offending farmer to ride or ship his goods on the cars at any 
price. Notwithstanding this unparalleled scheme of ingratitude 
and deception, the railroad and steamship companies and their 
hirelings have the cheek to continue holding out flattering induce¬ 
ments to Eastern and foreign laborers to visit and settle in this 
land of golden promises, to compete with pagan serfs and run the 
gauntlet of heathen women. Is it any marvel that the steamship and 
railroad companies seem to be considered by our most intelligent 
citizens who are not ticketed and free lunched, and by the most relia¬ 
ble newspapers—the natural and implacable enemies of the labor¬ 
ing classes on this Coast when they ought to be friends ? The 
State is no more dependent upon families for population than capi¬ 
tal upon citizen labor for permanent revenues. But the Sacramen¬ 
to Union has wisely said, “ Friendship in business usually yields to 
the temptations of avarice.” 




51 


We are told that all the employes in the counties through which 
the railroads run are sworn friends to the employers. Whether 
this be true or not, all other things being equal, it is just what they 
should'be. If the company was really in favor of the people, the 
voice of the entire inhabitants of these counties would sound their 
« praise so loud “ that all the world might hear.” If the company 
will take care of the people the people will take care of the com¬ 
pany. A cat will sing for anybody who feeds it well with meat and 
milk, but the same cat will bite anybody that treads on its tail. If 
the miners, farmers, mechanics, merchants, woodchoppers, and 
families along the road are well fed and cared for, they will work 
for and praise “ the bridge that takes them safe over.” But if 
their “ living wages,” cheap land, fare, and freight, promised as an 
equivalent for their subsidies and right of way, are withheld ; if 
their sons are excluded from the work promised, and pagans take 
their place at half price, they will ?'esent it. If the company is so 
determined to seek its own individual welfare without considering 
the public interests, how can it be regarded as a friend to the pros¬ 
perity of the counties through which they run ? If the companies 
refuse to pay equal taxes with other citizens in the counties through 
which they run on all personal property, how can they be regarded 
as friends ? When we remember that one hundred thousand serfs 
with the prospect of double that number in a year’s time, are to be 
employed on the roads and in every department of business activi¬ 
ty, excluding at least three times that many citizens, can we call 
them friends to their countrymen ? Now the road is done, and 
Chinamen monopolizing the work of the Coast, look at the false in¬ 
ducements held out to Eastern dependent laborers for patronage. 
Excuse me if I quote a verse from Shakespeare: 

“ For the prize'll ,bring thee to 
Shall hoodwink this mischance.” 

What rational inducement can there be for a civilized people to 
seek a home in CalifoYnia where they must work with a degraded 
race of slaves who, they are told from the pulpit, are brought here 
to cheapen the wages of the free, white laborer, and keep him in 
subjection to the rich ! But to keep up the travel to and fro, the 
companies deceive the Eastern working classes with an appearance 
of increasing population and demand for more “exalted labor,” 
and hold out flattering inducements they know cannot be realized. 
Men and women who are doing well are persuaded to leave a good 
employment or sell out at a great discount and ride over the great 
road made by the heathen to occupy the vacant lands that are wait¬ 
ing for them in the “Golden State.” They are not invited to com¬ 
pete with a servile race of cheap laborers whom we Californians 
are taught to took down upon as slaves. Oh, no, but to come as 
citizens and engage in our “exalted labors.” This false induce¬ 
ment wins the passage money to San Francisco, providing an un- 




52 


discovered “special contract” on the emigrant ticket does not set 
him off in some lonely spot before he gets half way there. Seven 
tenths of these people arrive without money, labor, land, and a few 
friends. 

He who persuades a man who depends on his hands for a living 
to visit this Coast with a prospect of settling on government vacant 
land, or that he will obtain exalted wages, simply because he is a 
white man, when there are two coolies to do any work he can do 
for one half less, is guilty of a transaction that will not hold water 
with honest men in the coming struggle for retribution. The com¬ 
pany continue to import from one to five thousand per month, 
and then ask their Eastern friends to prevent the necessity for these 
coolies by a coup D^ta that will outnumber them / But will the 
feeble opposition of intelligent labor remove the constant increase 
of coolies ? Will a greater number of exalted laborers from 
Europe raise the wages of a less number of Asiatics ? Or would 
not the Asiatics supply the demand with cheap labor and bring 
them to terms by increasing numbers. 

The only show for an exalted laborer to make money in Califor¬ 
nia is, to possess an independent capital to purchase land and em¬ 
ploy coolies, by rejecting his countrymen who will not work with 
them on the same terms. If a New Englander comes to this Coast 
who is able to engage in an enterprise that will pay the investment 
by the employment of- men at exalted wages, how much more will 
it pay by employing the cheaper labor. Would any man from Europe, 
Asia, Africa, or America, come to California with an expectation of 
receiving the exalted wages a moment after the proprietor discov¬ 
ered the same work could be done by other men, at one half less ? 
The loving principle of human nature and the kindness of consan¬ 
guinity in* wordly transactions extends to all classes, so far as it 
can be made profitable, Business in California means “BizB 

The six Chinese companies and railroad combinations stand in 
relation to the laboring people, whom they would gull similarly to 
the late diamond agitation — to fill the pockets of a few dishonest 
private individuals — by depleting the pockets of an honest public. 
The dependent working classes east of the Sierras and in Europe, 
are “ Hoodwinked ” and charmed by the sweet-flowing music of 
these modern sirens to be the more easily devoured. The debased 
and priest-ridden Asiatics as well as the cultivated free thinkers of 
New England, are persuaded by over-wrought descriptions of fort¬ 
unes easily made on the Pacific Coast with no other design than to 
get the freight and passage money here and back again, and the 
difference in the item of wages. It is believed that a regiment of 
Newspaper, Steamboat, and Hotel Agents, are pensioned by the 
combinations from Boston to Hong Kong with no higher motive 
than to keep up the emigration in transitu; going out nearly as 
fast as they come in. The money that comes and goes with this 
deceived and disappointed class of dependent laborers goes into 




53 


the pockets of the railroad company, wholesale merchants, stock 
jobbers, brokers, hotels, and grog shops, while the State is growing 
poorer every day. Consequently, our cities and towns, country and 
thoroughfares, are filled and thronged with a preternatural popula¬ 
tion who have been over persuaded to visit our shores and country 
through an abnormal excitement of mind that a fortune of labor or 
land was just in sight, and almost anywhere in the mines, nuggets 
are too numerous to pick up the scads. 

Those who come with suffient means to purchase farms, or hunt 
up and improve new ones, or employ the cheap labor in some pro¬ 
ductive enterprise, may do well, for many years. Those who come 
as skilled mechanics, first-class school teachers, clerks, etc., have 
done well, and may do so for a while, but even their chances will 
diminish as the cheap laborers multiply and acquire a knowledge 
of our letters and trades. In any case, without favoritism, the com¬ 
mon laborer coming with these expectations is doomed to disap¬ 
pointment in most instances. For as the diamonds were not found 
in Arizona, so the superior advantages of exalted labor, vacant 
lands, and nuggets, are not within his reach in California. With a 
broken heart and a broken bank, he must work at the same place 
and at the same price with the coolies or make his way back the 
best he can. 

There is no disposition among anti-coolie people to undervalue 
the superior advantages and resources of the Pacific Coast to make 
rapid fortunes. No one pretends to deny that we possess greater 
facilities of soil, climate, and natural wealth for the dependent la¬ 
borer than the sterile hills of his New England home. But what 
excuse can any honest man render, who is acquainted with these 
facts, if he persuades a poor laboring man to abandon a good situ¬ 
ation in New England, spend his passage money to settle in Cali¬ 
fornia, in the vain hope of making a better living with his hands, 
when the people are importing from one to five thousand coolies 
every month, who can do any kind of service in his line cheaper than 
he can by one half. 

Does any body believe that this system of servile labor can be 
forced upon an unwilling people. As it is constitutional and rea¬ 
sonable that the people should determine whether the coolie trade 
is working good or ill to the public, the Peope’s Protective Alli¬ 
ance on this Coast have proposed to move in the premises forth¬ 
with. If this or any other administration should attempt to e7iforce 
servile labor upon an unwilling people it would be useless. Coer- 
sion against the public good for the benefit of a few would create 
reaction. As Congress is a servant of, it cannot force so great an 
evil upon, a free people without agitation. An enlightened people 
will rise and resist any species of slavery or despotism that threat¬ 
ens their living or freedom. 

It is quite clear that the people have been deceived in the appli¬ 
cation of the Chinese treaty. It works directly opposite to what 
3 





54 


they expected it would. The aid and comfort the Administration 
gives to this cheap-labor trick is obnoxious to the people. So great 
is the alarm that if the importers, who are now a dreaded and pow¬ 
erful minority, should say, “ If you press this treaty reform so as 
to stop the importation of Chinamen, war is inevitable, they would 
reply as their fathers did, “ Let it come ; I repeat it, sir, let it come.” 
Such a glaring outrage upon the civil and religious freedom, pur¬ 
chased and transmitted to us by blood and treasure, cannot long 
proceed without colliding. 

We have no hostility to the heathen, but we love our country 
more. We give combinations of capital credit for the construction 
of a great work, but being fully apprised of the terrible and univer¬ 
sal calamity that is coming upon the whole nation by the coolie 
trade, it becomes every man who loves his country to offer an earnest 
prayer to Almighty God for aid while he uses the only appointed 
means, the ballet-box , to avert the coming struggle. 

To do this we must go upon the principle that the coolie trade is 
enriching a monopoly while it is reducing a whole commonwealth 
to poverty and disgrace. We have no time to lose. The enemy 
is gathering strength. Our only remedy is in the popular vote of 
the laboring classes whose dearest interests are at stake. We 
must bring it into their political discussions. They are now ready 
to receive it. Every Sta,te must speak for itself. Who knows what 
is wanted to carry on great enterprises and make us a prosperous 
country better than those who defend, support, and live in it. The 
people know what they want better than the selfish importers and 
employers of servile labor can tell them. If we want a slaveholders’ 
rebellion subdued, we ask the people and not the masters. If we 
want the treaty with China modified so as to prohibit the coolie 
trade, we ask the people, who know whether they want this reform 
better than emperors, presidents, or moneyed corporations. We 
need other abuses corrected, but upon this issue depends the ex¬ 
istence of all other national blessings. If we tolerate any class 
of people to compete with citizens in the means of living, unfit to 
be equal in the administration of the government, our downfall is 
inevitable. 

Whatever may be the party issues that divide us, we must be 
known as Americans in our entirety, or our republican institutions 
are doomed. But if we keep this subject constantly before the peo¬ 
ple, they will discover the evil and set it right without another war. 
A timely agitation with reason and argument will heal the wound 
with only a war of words. A local, popular vote next fall will set 
right that which, in the practical working of the Chinese treaty, we 
did wrong. That wrong must be undone before the monopoly gets 
the ascendency over the laboring people, or there will be another 
bloody revolution. I appeal to my countrymen. Will you allow 
these heathen men and women to be forced upon you in the condi¬ 
tion of slaves, whether you want them or not ? Will you permit 




this outrage upon your means of living to reduce you to the level 
of the pagans ? Will you permit them to accumulate till your wives 
and children are obliged to live amidst the nauseous smell of pagan 
pestilence for want of power to rise above it ? Then pledge your 
sacred honor before God and your country that you will meet this 
enemy and crush his power under the iron will of a people who are 
determined to be free. 


OUR COUNTRY IN THE FUTURE. 

The political discussion of the cheap-labor system is of greater 
philosophical importance to the working classes of our whole coun¬ 
try just now, because it is so closely allied to what we think of our 
children and free institutions in the future. 

It was a wise saying of De Tocquivill, “If the Democracy of 
America does not destroy slavery, slavery will destroy the Democ¬ 
racy of America.” Why ? Because these two principles are natu¬ 
ral antagonisms. A trial of these prophetic words for supremacy 
came off about forty years after; they* were well uttered. But the 
Democracy of America destroyed slavery. It would be well for 
all to bear in mind that no system of slavery, however mild or spe¬ 
cious, can exist any length of time in a Democratic Government. 
“Ye cannot serve two masters,” is applicable to our present con¬ 
dition. Every student in natural philosophy knows that one of the 
first principles is, that no two substances can occupy the same 
place at the same time. The same principle applies with equal 
force to moral and political ethics. When fifty thousand coolies 
came into the employments of this Coast—one half less than the 
citizen could work and support a family—fifty thousand citizens 
went out of those employments. If the coolie had not been im¬ 
ported, the same number of citizens must have remained and oc¬ 
cupied their places, with twice as many dependents to consume 
their wages. It is very clear that one of these two conflicting 
principles in the same government must one day overpower the 
other. You might as well attempt to mingle the “fires of hell ” 
with “the waters of life” without a tempest, as to harmonize this 
system of servile labor with American institutions without a civil 
commotion. It is simply impossible for a free people, with such 
fearful odds at stake, to suffer this aggression upon the public 
welfare to gain the ascendency over citizen labor without hazard¬ 
ing the loss of all they have gained the last ten years. It is well 
for us to keep a watchful eye upon the cruelties of monopolies to 
farmers, and if possible terminate the rum-selling hells and other 
nuisances ; but if farmers and politicians look upon this incom- 





56 


ing flood of servile labor, that gives the monopoly power to in¬ 
flict all these evils, with a stolid indifference, it may become the 
whirlpool that will engulf the ship of state with all on board. The 
traffic in coolie men and women is a child of modern slaveholders, 
and must come before the people for execution. The nation must 
destroy the child in its cradle, or the child will destroy the nation. 
The dignity of workingmen must destroy the coolie trade, or the 
coolie trade will destroy the dignity of workingmen. 

No argument can establish this point more thoroughly than the 
following address of Hon. Philip A. Roach, in Dashaway Hall, 
Thursday Evening, May 8, 1873: The subject of these remarks is 
one deserving of your earnest attention, for it is of the greatest 
importance to the workingmen of California. In this State, yet so 
sparsely populated, the experiment of importing Chinese cheap 
labor has many advocates. For over twenty years many capitalists 
have declared that, to develop our resources, we must draw from 
Asia some of her teeming millions to cultivate our soil, work our 
mines, and develop our industries. Capitalists have forgotten 
what Anglo-American, Celtic, and Teutonic labor has done for 
older States : that manufactures, mines, agriculture, and the me¬ 
chanic arts have, in the last ten years, even in the strife of civil 
war, doubled our National wealth ; that the former wilderness 
between the Mississippi Valley and the Rocky Mountains has 
been dotted with villages and towns, and that the church and the 
school-houses are thronged with children, the future hope of the 
Republic, whose fathers are our kindred, through relationship of 
origin. 

California has made little or no effort to attract such an immigra¬ 
tion to her shores. On the contrary, the press and public speak¬ 
ers, in undue proportion until a recent period, devoted their ener¬ 
gies to prove the advantages of bringing a docile and cheap-living 
race among us from China. Steamships receive subsidies to facili¬ 
tate intercourse with that Empire, and the consequences have been 
that every mail steamer has brought her thousand passengers to 
San Francisco, at rates one half less than immigrants could come 
to our State from Europe or the Atlantic slope. I am not in favor 
of granting subsidies to any company, but if our Government is 
disposed to give annually a million of dollars to bring Mongolians 
among us, I say that it would be far better to give that amount to 
Leland Stanford to bring our own people to this State. 

In 1852, when this question was first broached, I made a report 
against it — the only one at that time who took this view of the 
question. I saw Mr. Loring Pickering at that time, and had a 
conversation with him, and he told me that he heartily agreed with 
me, and that he would put my remarks in the paper that he then 
edited—the Placer Times — which he did, and they occupied a 
whole side of the paper—a very great expense in those days. 

The dominant idea urging the movement was that we must have 




57 


cheap labor. In that proposition the number and not the quality 
of the immigrants was considered ; and even in that sordid calcu¬ 
lation only temporary gainful objects were thought of. The ques¬ 
tion of the great and permanent interests of the State has not been 
^considered. The capitalists have acted on the maxim that low 
wages for manual labor would be an advantage. Circumstances 
have proved the fallacy of their opinion. The gains of the China¬ 
men have amounted to enormous sums, for their economy is far 
greater than that which can be practiced by our people ; but their 
accumulations do not exist among us. Their earnings have found 
their way to China, a large portion to pay for the food and clothing 
they import from their own country ; and their surplus has been 
exported in the precious metals ; while those of our working men, 
to the extent of $45,000,000, is deposited in savings banks to fos¬ 
ter our industries. 

The presence of Mongolians has prevented the arrival of a bet¬ 
ter class of immigrants. The American or European can not 
bring his children here in the hope of obtaining employment for 
the youthful members of his family, and he prefers to settle in the 
States, where his boys and girls can find employment without com¬ 
ing into competition with men who can work at wages on which 
his children would starve. In 1857 we had but 9,700 boys and girls 
on our school roll; some counties had not a child at school ; now 
we have 140,000, of whom 40,000 are able to earn their own living 
in light employments. With the laudation bestowed on Chinese 
labor here for its skill, patience, and endurance, capitalists have 
endeavored to introduce it into the older States. In Massachu¬ 
setts it has been employed in the shoe business ; in Pennsylvania, 
in cutlery; in New Jersey, in manufactures ; in Missouri, in cigar 
making and coopering. That labor can seek the most distant por¬ 
tion of our continent and there underwork white labor/where pop¬ 
ulation is dense and wages low. We cannot expect immigration 
to come to our shores under these circumstances. In the past, a 
wise policy of encouraging our kindred races to come among us 
.. would have given California a population of two million; but it 
will not come when every mail steamer pours into our port a thou¬ 
sand or twelve hundred Mongolians. 

The efforts to reduce wages by encouraging Chinese laborers to 
come here have not resulted in benefit to our capitalists. The 
houses the former occupy do not yield the average rental of build¬ 
ings occupied by a smaller number of white men. No building 
they now rent would bring, if offered for sale, one half the amount 
of its value before they occupied it. At first they give fair rents ; 
but soon after they demand repairs and reductions ; and such is 
the system prevailing among them that none of their countrymen 
will become their competitors. So fallen become the neighbor¬ 
hoods in which they reside, that no white man would take up his 
abode in their midst at any price. The value of property in the 




58 


Chinese quarter, once the most important portion of the city, has 
declined immensely, and the surrounding districts have suffered 
also from their proximity. The northern portion of the city, from 
which the spectator can behold our glorious bay, the Golden Gate, 
the valleys of Alameda, and the peaks of Mount Tamalpais, and 
Mount Diablo, is shunned by families for residences, because to 
reach it they must pass the Chinese quarter. To remedy the evil, 
a costly thoroughfare has been commenced, and it will cost nearly 
two million to complete it. All the branches of business that 
would be benefited by the residence of a white population reap no 
advantage from the presence of the Mongolians. The grocer, the 
baker, and the butcher lose the amount of business that would ac¬ 
crue to them from the consumption of a white population ; and 
our farmers reap little benefit from the use of flour by the Chinese, 
for they do not use it as long as rice can be had for eight cents a 
pound, although flour can be had for less than half that rate. 
Nearly all that the Chinamen make is from white people, and near¬ 
ly all they spend is among themselves. The result of this condi¬ 
tion of affairs is to lessen the earnings of the white laborers. Yet 
white laborers have proved that if capitalists give them the chance, 
their work in the end will be as cheap as that of the Mongolians. 
This has been proved by Colonel Peter Donahue, who built a rail¬ 
road in Sonoma County with white labor. It is as well built as any 
in the State, and its owner is well satisfied with its cost. 

When, from any cause, low wages become the future prospect of 
working men, high taxation will be the consequence. When labor¬ 
ers can not obtain sufficient to support their families, the almshouse 
and other asylums—more the legitimate results of greed in society 
than the offspring of charity—loom up to appall the hearts of the 
workingmen at the dismal prospects that such places may be the 
homes of their declining days. When society reflects upon the 
small share it allots to its wealth producers, thus fostering the mis¬ 
ery and crime by which many of its members suffer, it will soon 
learn the best means by which the evils may be avoided. It is 
to pay a fair day’s wages for a fair day’s work. Then the osten¬ 
tatious asylums abounding in the land would be less needed than 
they are at present, and the toiling classes who do so much 
more to assist the poor than they are credited for doing, would 
escape the heavy burden of taxation imposed for the relief of 
pauperism and the punishment of vice. With labor properly- 
compensated, whether it be by co-operation or by a participation 
in profits on some graduated scale, every trade could become a 
brotherhood, with means adequate to support its sick and dis¬ 
abled members. Adapting the agencies through which such ma¬ 
terial assistance might be extended is a problem not beyond the 
ability of modern civilization to provide. 

A few years ago the immigration of Chinamen received a check. 
It was owing to the monster meetings held in this city by our 




59 


mechanics. The Chinese companies became aware that the pop¬ 
ular feeling was against encouraging their immigration, and from 
the immense number participating in those proceedings it looked 
as if action independent of party predilections would arrest the' 
evil against which our people'complained. But time has passed. 
^ Congress has taken no action upon the matter; the mail steam¬ 
ers draw their subsidies ; new lines are now entering into com¬ 
petition, and before long we shall receive immense numbers, 
stimulated to seek California by the low price of passage. The 
arguments made use of by our working classes in the discus¬ 
sions to which I refer, as to the duties of society to its wealth 
producers, have found a response from minds whose thoughts 
are not clouded by the pursuit of gain, through sordid speculations. 
The calm authority of Religion has declared that society is men¬ 
aced by the grasping avarice of the age. Utterances like these 
have been made by Archbishop Purcell, of Ohio, and by Henry 
Ward Beecher, of New York. 

The idea that capital may reduce wages to such terms as to pau¬ 
perize labor has received a rebuke during the present year, also, in 
quarters where it was least expected. It came from the Press— 
* the enlightened journals of Old England—and it proclaimed that 
capital shall pause in its efforts to reduce the wages of labor, or 
else social war might follow. On that occasion the leading journal 
of the world, the London Times, told the aristocracy that they 
should not introduce the Chinese laborers to compete with Britons. 
Such declarations have not been made by the great journals of the 
United States. Fears of offending the moneyed classes have 
checked their utterances. 

These declarations were made at a time when the people of Eng¬ 
land were exasperated at the high pflice of coal. The miners re¬ 
fused to work because their masters wanted to reduce the wages 
ten per cent. In the meantime the proprietors raised the price of 
coal over one hundred per cent., and the general public blamed, at 
first, the miners for not working at the reduced rates. Seventy 
thousand men were thrown out of employment, and hundreds of 
families were reduced to the verge of starvation. The owners 
reaped immense fortunes ; and, elated with their victory, some of 
them proposed to import the debased and hard-working Chinaman 
to take the place of the Welchman. Public opinion protested 
against such an outrage, and when the capitalists were deprived 
of that probable resource they soon gave in. The miners work 
in pits, from 2,000 to 2,300 feet below sea level. So exhaustive is 
their labor, owing to the want of ventilation and intense heat, 
that the men can only work for a few hours at a time, and no 
amount of wages would pay them for prolonged toil—it would 
be selling their life-blood for a scanty pittance to make the at¬ 
tempt. 

In Great Britain, where labor-saving machinery is employed to 




60 


an extent greater in amount than in the rest of the civilized 
world, alarm was felt by her deep thinkers at the possible con¬ 
sequences of the introduction of cheap laborers from China. 
•The machinery of Great Britain assists production to a greater 
extent than could the millions of the Celestial Empire, were it 
possible to set them at work in the Sea-girt Island. Labor- 
saving machinery does not come into competition with labor in 
any manner that the latter has any just cause to dread. It assists 
labor to become more productive with less waste of material, and 
it saves time, which is of the greatest value to the working man. 
The inventions, the discoveries of brain labor, and* the skillful 
appliance of mechanical knowledge, although they yield the cap¬ 
italist the lion’s share of the profits, give the working classes 
many comforts that would be impossible without the aid of ma¬ 
chinery. But these gigantic producers do not consume the sta¬ 
ples of life ; they reduce the cost of most of the necessaries that 
laborers must have to repair the waste of system they suffer in 
their exertions. 

The influx of one hundred thousand Chinamen into Great Brit¬ 
ain would do more injury to the interests of her laboring classes 
there than if the powers of her labor-saving machinery were in¬ 
creased adequate to the labor of one million Mongolians. The 
former would work for lower wages, and then they would enter 
the market to purchase food ; so that there would be a double 
pressure on the English working men—the first, to depress their 
labor earnings ; secondly, to render their purchasing power less 
effective. 

What I have said of England has its application here, only it 
is easier to illustrate the proposition to take a country where 
the population is overcrowded, where wealth is enormous and 
concentrated in the hands of the few, where machinery has reached 
the most extraordinary perfection and represents an immense fixed 
capital at low rates of interest, and where, in addition to all the 
other depressing causes, weighing with the power of the abuses of 
centuries, the workingmen are not yet able to redress their griev¬ 
ances by the general exercise of the ballot. 

In Great Britain machinery has increased wages. It has drawn 
labor to the factories, and has enabled the farm laborers, who have 
worked since the beginning of the century at a scanty pittance, to 
obtain an increase of wages from eleven shillings per week to fif¬ 
teen shillings, although when they first asked the advance distin¬ 
guished prelates said that they ought to be ducked in the horse- 
pond. 

The advocates of Chinese labor allege that the argument now 
urged against the introduction of Mongolians was made in the past 
against European immigrants. Such was the case to a limited ex¬ 
tent, but as it was founded in prejudice it soon disappeared. We 
are the descendants of Europeans, and the arrival of additions to 




61 


our original stock has resulted in our me’nta’ and physical improve¬ 
ment. Where that immigration has commingled, the birth-rate has 
, increased ; where prejudice has restricted intermarriage with our 
kindred races, the birth-rate has declined. Let the skeptic on this 
point examine the census returns of 1790 and compare them with 
those of 1850, i860, and 1870, and he will find arguments in favor 
of encouraging European immigration that will far outweigh even 
the pecuniary value of the immigrant as a producer. 

The States to which that European immigration has flowed have 
increased enormously in wealth, whether their dominant industries 
were manufactures, mines, or agriculture. The aggregated wealth 
per individual has increased, making all deductions for difference 
of currency or any other circumstances. These foreigners have 
become land-owners, heads of families, and soon become absorbed 
in our nationality. On this point I extract the following informa¬ 


tion from the census of 1870: 

Total population United States, 1870.3^,5 55,933 

Total native born.32.989,437 

Total foreign born.!. 5,566,436 


Children having one or both parents foreign born... 10,892,015 

Let the offspring of these unions be observed, and we will have 
reason to rejoice at the high standard of their mental and physical 
qualities. 

The presence of Mongolians in our country, if the natural repug¬ 
nance to intermarriage with them which# now fortunately exists 
should wear off, would not result in giving our State a desirable 
population. On the contrary, we would have a class of half-breeds 
possessing, we fear, the evil passions of both parents. Nott and 
Gliddon, in their great work, the “Types of Mankind,” have set 
forth the effects of the commingling of the Indian, the African, and 
the European. Their progeny, the Mestizo, Chino, Zambo, Quin¬ 
tero, etc., would give rise to new varieties by the addition of the 
Mongolian element, and in time we would have a race of degraded 
beings, victims of loathsome distempers, to form the lower stratum 
of our population. Their pursuit of any branch of labor would so 
debase it in popular estimation, that no white man would engage in 
it. We would be preparing, for the sake of obtaining cheap labor 
now, a system that would pauperize and degrade many branches of 
labor in the future. 

We have a juvenile population of more working capacity than 
any other State in the Union of double our population. This labor 
is to be had by capitalists uniting to devise some means for em¬ 
ploying it—for instructing it—not from motives of philanthropy, but 
from an intelligent view of their permanent interests. The youth 
of our State could be as easily instructed as the Mongolians ; but 
the manufacturers preferred the latter. They expected that they 
would- be more docile ; but they have discovered their mistake. 
3 * 







62 


They have been instructing Chinamen to become skilled workmen 
for Chinese capitalists, who, in many branches, now monopolize the 
business. Long ago this state of affairs was predicted by me in the 
Examiner , and in the clearest manner I said the time would come 
that whoever could obtain that labor at the cheapest rates it could 
be drawn from Asia, would command the branches of manufactures 
in which it could be employed among us. 

That condition has arrived, and our capitalists, to maintain their 
business, are obliged to fall back on our juvenile laborers. But the 
evil has been accomplished, and cannot be repaired. All that these 
youthful toilers engaging in the trades can expect to do, is to follow, 
after they have attained manhood, an occupation in which the cheap¬ 
living Chinaman, without a home or family, a mere bunker in a 
filthy den, can underwork them. The loss to our State from the 
non-employment of boys and girls, in several pursuits suited to their 
ability and strength, is not to be measured merely in dollars. Thou¬ 
sands might have been rendered useful who have been doomed to 
idleness and exposed to vicious influences. And there was no 
economic reasons for their exclusion from industrial pursuits. 
While some firms gave a preference to Mongolians, others kept 
white men employed, and the consequence has been that the latter 
have maintained their business uninterrupted, while the others have 
had to change their systems. 

Five years ago our leading merchants and capitalists assembled 
at a banquet to welcome to our State a delegation of distinguished 
citizens of Illinois. Tins great advantage that would result to the 
American Union from the ratification of the Burlingame Treaty 
formed the staple article of laudation of the speeches made on that 
occasion. In that treaty it is provided that the Chinese shall have 
access to our public schools ; but as the United States have only 
a few in their Federal capacity, our local schools would not be open 
to them. But the Chinese have in that clause a concession which 
is made by treaty to no other nation ; and it would look as if the 
Government of the United States intended in good faith, on a grand 
scale, to give the Mongolians all the advantages of a first-class 
American education. Five years have elapsed since the treaty was 
ratified, and the official returns do not show that there has been 
any material increase in Chinese commerce, or that the result is in 
our favor. In 1870, which presents a fair average of our commer¬ 
cial intercourse with China, our imports were fourteen million, six 
hundred and twenty-eight thousand, four hundred and eighty-seven 
dollars, while our total domestic exports were six million, four hun¬ 
dred and twenty-one thousand, one hundred and sixty-three dollars, 
a balance against us on the declared entries of over eight million 
dollars ; and a large portion of the exports we make to Chinese 
ports is to supply the wants of foreign commerce ; so that as re¬ 
gards what has been accomplished in increasing our markets among 
the Chinese themselves, we may safely state the account as follows : 






63 


That we import fourteen million dollars from China, while her trade 
with us does not exceed four million dollars. In addition, much 
, money is carried out of the country by returning Chinamen, and we 
pay the China Mail Steamship Company one million dollars an¬ 
nually for carrying on a portion of that commerce. 

As to promoting our commerce the treaty has been a sublime 
failure ; as a means of promoting the unity of civilization, it has 
been a fraud. We are confined to a few ports in China, and the 
slightest step beyond the limits assigned to our people would result 
in their death, from the fanatical hatred of the Chinese toward all 
foreigners. We have made attempts to improve the moral condi¬ 
tion of the Chinese by lavishing money on missionaries, not merely 
to convert them from paganism, but to prevent the wholesale 
slaughter of female children, who are put to death to prevent their 
too rapid increase. That is a worse crime than is practiced by the 
cannibals. We have endeavored to improve the morals of those 
who are among us. But visit their quarters and you will behold 
vice in its most hideous aspects, familiarizing our children with 
scenes that inspire horror by their infamous character. Yet the 
love of the almighty dollar has induced many families to employ 
the sleek-looking China boy, or full-grown man, to be their house 
servants. They prefer him to the Irish girl who is blessed with 
having cousins that are “decent boys” enough to come to see her 
in the kitchen, and to the German girl who likes to enjoy herself 
occasionally at the entertainments usual among the children of the 
fatherland. But such families run a fearful risk. Bridget and Katri¬ 
na will set the children no evil example ; they will not be corrupters 
of their morals, which is a danger to be dreaded from the employ¬ 
ment of male servants in bedrooms, be they Europeans or Asiatics. 

The treaty with China has not increased our commerce, and there 
is no hope that it will ever do so largely. It is proved to exert an 
injurious effect on labor, with consequences which are only in the 
beginning of their development. 

Let the treaty be abrogated, or modified, as we have a right to do 
and at a very short notice. I have read every treaty made by our 
Government since our existence as a Republic, and I know whereof 
I speak. Our treaty with England dates from 1782, modified at 
different times. Our diplomatic relations with France commenced 
in 1778, modified later by the treaty with the First Consul. With 
Spain in 1795, modified at various times since ; and with China our 
treaties were modified on three occasions—1844, 1858, and 1868. 

Experience proves that the latter change, made through Mr. Bur¬ 
lingame, has not been an advantage to our merchants, nor a benefit 
to our mechanics. I have no race prejudices, but in forming the 
great State that is to arise on the Pacific slope, I prefer that it shall 
be peopled with the highest types of the human family. I do not 
want to see the admixture of Mongolian and Caucasian blood, for 
it would result in a crafty and inferior progeny, bearing on their 




64 


persons the marks of mental and physical degeneracy. On these 
shores the favorable condition of climate tends to make a race of 
men and women whose forms bid fair to rival in beauty the classic 
models of antiquity, and whose understanding may be capable of 
unraveling the great secrets of nature, whose unfolding will be more 
valuable to humanity than the commerce of China a hundred times 
multiplied. 


WHAT WOULD BE THE CONSEQUENCE IF SUCH 
A SYSTEM OF CHEAP LABOR PREVAILED ALL 
OVER THIS COAST. 

It would create a caste in society between those who import and 
employ them, and those who work with them at the same wages, 
the same as slavery did between the masters and the poor white 
trash. This distinction in society would produce a scarcity of cit¬ 
izen labor, and increase the demand for coolies. This would con¬ 
tinue to decrease the citizen’s wages and means of living till he 
would be forced to a revolution in the government sometime. We 
do not oppose the coolie trade because we fear their numerical 
strength any more than the Germans, or because we think they are 
any more disposed to do evil than other persons, or because they 
are filthy, but because being regarded and treated as an inferior 
race they can do the nation’s ordinary work cheaper than a citizen, 
and therefore must necessarily retard all other foreign emigration. 
We are determined that no race of people shall come into this 
Union of States to compete with the citizen in the condition of a 
slave, because they would create a caste in society by which they 
would not only degrade their own labor and all who work with them 
for the same wages, but consequently displace and drive out from 
us our own countrymen. 

The very idea of “ cheap coolie labor ' 1 ' 1 involves an inferior race 
whose social and political condition is opposed to Christian prin¬ 
ciple, civil liberty, and progress ; it implies cheap morals, cheap 
society, and cheap living. The very lowest type of living required 
to make a citizen acceptable in a Christian community is infinitely 
above the highest type of cheap heathen living. They can get rich 
on what would make a civilized man grovel in the dust of poverty. 
But if the citizen mechanic or laborer must be satisfied with servile 
labor wages, then he must be satisfied with servile labor company 
and living. He must be satisfied to live without a Christian home 
and comforts, without a school-house and a church ; his income will 
not support these , and keep his family from starvation. He must 
be content for the aristocracy to shoot their practical jokes at him, 






65 


and keep quite reticent amid the ridicule of his rival associates, 
because he cannot rise above his condition. 

The importers and their political friends say all this is a glance 
only at the dark side of the subject, anticipating evil when the signs 
are not so foreboding. But by their fruits shall ye know them. 
For many years after men began to traffic in African coolies, it 
made but little distinction among the people. But after the white 
and black population became numerous, and many white people 
became rich, an aristocracy of wealth, or caste , grew up—founded 
upon the number of slaves a man owned. They who did their own 
work were looked upon as the lower class of society, and exerted 
but little political influence. The coolie system of cheap labor 
does not yet create much distinction among the citizen population 
outside of financial affairs. But wait awhile till the coolies are in¬ 
definitely multiplied among us. The farmer or mechanic, who 
works for other people, or having a small farm with sons and daugh¬ 
ters who do their own work, will not be ranked among the aristoc¬ 
racy who work their lands and industrial enterprises with coolies: 
' such farmers and mechanics, though industrious, honest, intelligent 
citizens, will exert but little influence in the management of Amer¬ 
ican institutions. And when the coolie system is thoroughly inter¬ 
woven through all the Pacific States and Territories, it will be a 
rare and desperate struggle that a descendant of the lower class 
will be able to rise above the degradation in which he was born. 
If the people permit the coolie trade to continue till these slave¬ 
holding distinctions become arbitrary and judicial in American 
society it will develop a fire that cannot be extinguished at the 
ballot box. 

The importers, landed and railroad monopolies are laying their 
plans and combining their capital to accomplish this state of soci¬ 
ety on this Coast before the working people are alarmed. What are 
we to understand by the new steamers and sail vessels, both on the 
Atlantic and Pacific Coast, also from Germany and England, 
making ready for the “ China trade.” Every body knows that the 
legitimate commerce between China and America is not, outside of 
this traffic, one half sufficient to employ the steamers and ships 
now in the service of the companies, landing five thousand per 
month. It is clear that the difference between the wages of a cit¬ 
izen is increasing the demand for coolies, and the supply is to be 
equal to the demand. 

Now if this influx of heathen were emigrants, in the constitution¬ 
al and proper sense, it would create no alarm, no hoodlum would 
ever disturb them. No anti-coolie society would be organized to 
oppose them,v no Miners’ union would prevent their employment. 
If they did not come here virtually as slaves, their influence on the 
community would be like any Caucasian race. It is the slavery 
feature of this traffic that degrades the labor and wages of the cit¬ 
izen, and drives out the Caucasian races, that alarms the people. 




Does any reflecting person believe that one in a thousand of these 
ignorant people would ever think of coming to this country to seek 
a home and fortune by conforming to our habits, manners, and 
customs for life from their own intelligent choice as other emigrants 
do ? Is it reasonable to suppose that these thousands of indigent 
pagan men and women, totally ignorant of American institutions, 
would ever dream of coming among Grangers, if their dishonest 
countrymen did not persuade them with the promise of protection, 
and that they could get rich in a few years, and return to live in 
luxury ? When these victims of avarice are fully persuaded, 
money is furnished to pay their fare on conditions that amount to 
slavery for a term of years. Would these six Chinese companies 
in San Francisco advance the capital with any other object in view 
but the price of fare, freight, and difference between the wages of 
serfs and citizens, when here ? Would they make such extraor¬ 
dinary exertions to pour into our country such a flood of deluded 
men and polluted women because they were moved with patriotic 
desires to become public benefactors, and loved the moral elevation 
of their countrymen ? Has any strange thing happened because 
the enterprising American navigation company seize this excellent 
opportunity to coin millions of dollars, if the government and peo¬ 
ple are willing to have it so ? But the people are beginning to dis¬ 
cover the serious mistake. It is now clear as the sunlight that this 
advantage of coolie labor over the citizens will, when their numbers 
are equal, bring the wages and condition of poor people to a level 
with the heathen. In that event no common laborer with his 
hands, no mechanic with a knowledge of some useful art, that a 
Mongolian can do or learn, will be able to educate and support his 
family in common respectability with only the wages of a coolie, 
who lives in a jungle, and eats his food with a chop stick. The 
alternative is before him ; he must come down to the financial status 
of the coolie or starve. The wages of the coolie is even now the 
standard of all ordinary labor on the Pacific Coast, and a feeling of 
superiority is visible in families who employ them, and a danger¬ 
ous sense of inferiority among those who are obliged to work with 
them at the same price. But no such feeling or alarm would or 
could exist if five hundred thousand of the lowest classes of Euro¬ 
peans had been scattered over this country by the benevolent aid 
of their own countrymen. The European adds to our stars, be¬ 
cause he is a freeman. The pagan adds to our stripes, because he 
is a slave. 




67 


1 WHAT WOULD BE THE RESULT IF THE SAME 
NUMBER OF COOLIES SHOULD COME INTO 
THE EASTERN, WESTERN, AND SOUTHERN 
STATES THE NEXT FIFTEEN YEARS. 

If the system is fixed upon the Pacific, why not upon the Atlan¬ 
tic Coast? If the people interpose no kind of obstructions here, 
what is to hinder the enterprising, philanthropic importers from 
shipping an equal number of coolies to each of those States ? If 
it is right here, why should it be wrong there ? The kind of work 
to be clone on the Atlantic side of the Union is more congenial to 
the habit of mind and peculiarities of the Chinese than that on the 
Pacific. With the well known fact that they can imitate any habit, 
y manner, or custom, and learn any of the simple arts in a very short 
time ; with a fair opportunity, as they acquire a knowledge of our 
language, they would in time become masters of the most intricate 
mechanism, and in less than fifteen years would dispense with the 
tedious process of apprenticing New England boys and girls to 
acquire a knowledge of the arts or mechanics, because “the coolies 
can do all that kind of work cheaper.’ To facilitate the work of 
dispensing with the effete style of apprenticing American youth to 
menial employments, the custom of shipping small boys is gaining 
popular favor with “the better class of society,” who purchase or 
“ contract ” for them a certain number of years in preference to the 
men, because they more readily imitate the habits, and learn the 
language of the family. If the people are willing, these young coo¬ 
lies will be shipped by thousands into the agricultural districts and 
manufacturing towns of every State in the Union until an American 
or Caucasian apprentice would be as uncommon in the New Eng¬ 
land States as in California, and hoodlums quite as plenty as at the 
present time. The fact, that the coolies do not multiply and re¬ 
plenish the earth in a Christian land, as the negroes did, makes the 
traffic still more profitable to the Chinese and American traders. 
When the bodies and bones of the living or dead are returned by 
the same company who imported them, another supply is imported 
from Hongkong. The stock of the old chattel system of cheap 
labor was constantly improving, because they had often the best 
Southern blood in their veins, but in the new system we are to be 
cursed with unmitigated heathenism that will defy the efforts of 
Brother Gibson “ad infinitum .” It requires no great prescience 
to discover that, if this traffic is not suppressed, it will not require 
fifteen years to make their proportion to the working citizens of the 
whole commonwealth equal to the slaves with the white population 
of the South fifteen years ago, and manyfold more difficult to re- 




68 


move. We are now like a noble ship cut loose from her moorings ; 
if the moral power of labor with its dignity of hands does not rise 
and say at the polls, “ Thus far shalt thou go, and no further,” what 
can prevent us from drifting into the vortex of another “ Bloody 
chasm ? ” 

In view of this prospect what are the present operatives in 
the workshops and ordinary industries of New England to do 
for a subsistance as one after another they are exchanged for 
the forthcoming coolies. The importers say they must work 
cheap as the cheapest, or create new industries. But what new 
industries could be invented or devised that would not require 
the same cheap labor to make it remunerative ? Is labor produc¬ 
tive independent of capital ? If capital is withdrawn from the cit¬ 
izen laborer, what will the sons and daughters of the native pro¬ 
ducing population in Eastern manufacturing towns and cities 
drive at for a living? Do you say, “Go West, young man?” 
All right, but whither then shall we flee to avoid the degrada¬ 
tion of the cheap coolie. Every nook and corner of the Pacific 
Coast is occupied, no more Christians are wanted there without " 
plenty of money to hire the coolies to do their work. 

As the employment of Chinamen is a mere moneyed considera¬ 
tion in the single item of wa^es, the introduction of coolies must 
set aside tens of thousands of men and women at work in Eastern 
manufactories. We may make a proximate calculation of their 
condition. First, the women, we believe the great majority of them, 
would rather work in company with the coolies for the same wages 
and even starve than come to shame ; yet it is safe to conjecture 
that if the natural resources of industry are withheld from these 
noble women, judging the future by the past, a large margin, when 
often besieged by the arts of flattery, falsehood, and deception, 
when pinched for want of food, will verify the prophetic Dryden : 

“ He whose firm faith no reason could remove, 

Will melt before that soft seducer’s love.” 

Five thousand women have been set aside from domestic service 
on this Coast, during the past seven years. Their places are oc¬ 
cupied by Chinamen to do the work God provided for the woman. 
The immorality of these men in private families in many instances 
is proverbial, but to say that hundreds of these women are now 
living in infamy, who would have remained true women in their 
legitimate employment, is not saying too much. Only those whose 
safeguard is the inward moral strength of a principle that is above 
flattery, can resist “ the terrible pressure ” of outward temptation, 
when united with actual want, to depart from the path of rectitude 
and duty. Only those whose strength is the love of purity and 
holiness, the fear of God and a reverence for his commands, will 
be able to stand the storm of fire that is to try the entire represen¬ 
tation of the now industrious laboring citizen, ladies, and rising girls 
of this self-supporting nation, if people permit the Chinamen to 




69 


occupy the places God has designed as the proper sources for 
women to secure a living. The coolies are invading the living of 
the American women, as well as men ; and we would inquire in. the 
light of the present moment what is to be the proper sphere of the 
^ coming woman ? They have already reduced the minimum of their 
present wages to the maximum of the coolie wages, which they 
could endure better than to be wholly excluded from their own em¬ 
ployment by their own sisters, for a “man-servant.” As the pres¬ 
ent wages of female employes in Eastern manufactories and fami¬ 
lies is barely sufficient to make a decent living, a reduction to the 
coolie boy would bring them to a point of starvation. 

Secondly, as to the men who are said to be the “ lords of crea¬ 
tion,” it requires no argument to convince intelligent observers as 
we remove the means of a comfortable support we discourage the 
7 na?-riage relatio 7 i. For, rather than be called the poor, white 
trash, on a par with the coolies, an ambitious young man will refuse 
to take upon himself the responsibilities of the wedded life. Of 
course, with this depletion of Saxon families, there will be an in¬ 
crease of idleness, crime, desperadoes, and looseness of morals 
that will increase the demand for cheap coolie women, and very 
* costly hemp. But the most serious feature of this argument is, 
that the coolie trade diminishes the Saxon race itself. How can 
the citizen population accumulate in numerical strength to offset 
the coolie labor without families ? It not only discourages the 
marriage relation, but the number of children born in Saxon fami¬ 
lies already established will diminish as the difficulties of supporting 
them increase ; and when all the avenues to a comfortable main¬ 
tenance are closed up by the employment of coolies, the number of 
Christian homes among all the races eligible to constitutional priv¬ 
ileges will proportionably dwindle, till the government is overrun 
with Chinese jungles and “'Melicum harems.” By just so much 
as the workingmen and women of our nation are displaced by the 
coolie labor by so much will the Saxon families and population de¬ 
crease, while idleness and debauchery, crime and highway rob¬ 
bery abound. 

Therefore, if we regard it in the most Christian and philanthropic 
light, the introduction of heathen serfs to do the work of a repub¬ 
lic is a great national calamity. It is a bold usurpation of consti¬ 
tutional rights, and perversion of international law, to advance 
the wealth of single corporations that will slowly but surely demol¬ 
ish the entire commonwealth. It is a gigantic system of labor 
deception which, if not checked, will create a scene of moral and 
social disorder between the working citizens and the aristocracy 
of' coolie labor never surpassed by the feeling and confusion that 
existed between the people and the slave-holding aristocracy, be¬ 
fore the question was settled by the terrible arbitration of “ man 
in mortal combat with his fellow-man.” God in his mercy grant 
that the usurpation imminent may be suppressed before it becomes 
another rebellion dominant. 







70 


CAPITAL AND LABOR OUGHT TO BE FRIENDS. 

Our primitive parents were driven from the garden without ma¬ 
terial wealth ; since then the accumulations of capital have been 
the fruits of labor. 

A political struggle between capital and labor has fairly begun. 
But really there is no necessity for a contest between them. 
The fact that there is, is more the result of selfish education than 
necessity. For capital has no value without labor, and labor can 
not be remunerative without capital. Therefore being mutually 
dependent, they should be mutual friends. Capital is independent 
of labor so long as its stock of provisions on hand shall last. 
But after these are consumed, capital must receive aid and supply 
from labor or starve. All antagonism between these two pillars of 
free institutions is the result of a selfish ambition. When these 
two elements of national life and prosperity discover their mutual 
interest and dependence, they will co-operate harmoniously for in¬ 
dividual and public good. But when a combination of men attempt 
to centralize the power of capital to pervert the charity that a free 
and generous people have extended to their semi-barbarian neigh¬ 
bors, so as to cripple the industries, lower the moral standard, and 
cheapen the wages of the civilian to the standard of barbarians, 
simply to augment capital, is certain to provoke a jealousy between 
the enlightened citizen laborers and the selfish combination that 
will result in political, and 7 >iay become a physical struggle for the 
ascendency. 

“the ministers’ code” 

Says, “The inferiority of the Chinese civilization does not prove 
the inferiority of the race.” Who says it does ? There is no 
debate about the physical or mental capacity of either party, but 
the danger of tolerating a class of people inferior in political con¬ 
dition, but equal in the benefit of labor, soil, and school. The 
difference between the American civilization and the Mongolian is, 
“the Americans established their own political and religious free¬ 
dom, while the coolie is a slave to a political and religious despot¬ 
ism. The American people reserved the right to form themselves 
into strongly organized associations, by which they could act harmo¬ 
niously for the protection of each individual subject against the 
possibility of an inferior or superior race in the administration of 
law and labor. To oppose this inferiority of races in the United 
States is the object of “ The People’s Protective Alliance.” This 
principle of equality 'in our Government did not originate in the 
natural mind of man so fond of exercising lordship over some¬ 
body inferior in political condition. It is the Divine right of labor¬ 
ing men to protect themselves from the tyranny of capital, master, 





71 


and slave. This right, so complete and equal before the law in 
America, is limited in Europe and wholly excluded from semi-civil¬ 
ized nations. The common people in Asia have no power to asso¬ 
ciate themselves in organized bodies for self-protection any more 
than the African slaves. It is an absolute despotism over soul and 
^ body. Hence the coolies, locked up for centuries under tyrannical 
and superstitious service to the imperial majesty of Josh, are more 
easily deceived and enslaved than any other people. Shall the 
ministers of the meek and lowly Jesus, who came to break every 
yoke and set the prisoner free, take advantage of this moral and 
political inferior condition, and aid, by our prayers and influence, a 
great centralized money power, unknown in past history, to combine 
the capital of Americans with the aristocracy of Asia, and set 
thousands upon thousands of these debased men and women upon 
our shores to be retained in succession during life with the same 
inferior, moral, and political condition as when at home ? 

When a man pretends to have some natural superiority over 
other people he sets himself up for a mark to shoot practical jokes 
at. This is just what is the matter with the Ministers’ Code. The 
fact that it advocates the “coolie trade” destroys the constitution- 
* al equality of law and labor by judicial authority to establish a race 
who must forever remain inferior to those who are their superiors 
in moral and political condition. This is what the anti-coolie 
people object to, because it is an inferiority of condition established 
by arbitrary legislation to prevent the coolie, with ever so much 
mental capacity, from ever aspiring to the highest ideal of intellect¬ 
ual culture, as did brother Gibson when the Irish gintleman hoisted 
him from his plebeian condition to seek higher spheres for the 
employment of his native genius. 

When the Chinaman is brought or comes to our country with 
the same great object in view as the Irishman, to elevate some 
humble lad to higher spheres, the arms of all anti-coolie people will 
be thrown wide open to receive him. But when he comes to make 
himself easy by making the American lad bear greater burdens ; 
when he has straw to make brick and our boys have none ; when 
he takes their twelve-dollar job for eight, and they get none at all ; 
when we compete with him for wages, instead of being elevated, 
he brings us down to his chop-sticks ; when he gathers up all the 
surplus money, and we gather none, we object to the Ministers’ 
Code and prefer the Irishman who, when he carries the burdens for 
less money than we can, will lift us into higher spheres. 

Just look at it, ministers of the Gospel, descendants of the New 
England fathers, advocating the “necessity ” of importing thou¬ 
sands of pagan serfs to cheapen the wages of their own countrymen 
and force them into the condition of degraded heathen, to gratify 
the most wicked conspiracy of capital against laboring men the 
world ever knew. Such a system of civilization will work in China, 
but not in America. If we tolerate an inferior condition that im- 






72 


plies a superior party in the administration of law and labor it will 
create a friction in the machinery of a democratic republican gov¬ 
ernment, that will end, not many days hence, in a “smash up.” 


IS THE PUBLIC BENEFITED BY THE COOLIE 

TRADE ? 

If the standard price of a citizen’s wages necessary to support 
him will not justify capital to build railroads and manufactories, 
then there is no healthy derpand for them. If to obviate that dif¬ 
ficulty capital builds roads and establishments with cheap, servile 
labor to compete with Eastern manufactories in all kinds of mer¬ 
chandise, the enterprising Yankees will do the same thing in self- 
defense. The result is an exchange of intelligent, skilled work¬ 
men and superior goods for ignorant, unskilled heathen and infer¬ 
ior goods, without profit to either party and a loss to society. For 
instance, the Nationalist says, “ There was a time when we made 
a better boot or shoe in San Francisco than was imported, because 
we made our own stock and manufactured our own goods with 
skilled citizen labor. Consequently the proprietors monopolized 
the custom work on the whole Coast, while the workmen and mer¬ 
chants were prosperous and happy. But not satisfied with good 
fortu?ie , in a suicidal moment they imitated the railroad treachery 
and discharged the skilled workmen for pagan serfs. Other estab¬ 
lishments saw the speculation, discharged their hands, and the 
employment of coolies became quite universal. The discharged 
workmen with their wives and children left the city in disgust for 
their Eastern homes. For one thousand pagans we have exchang¬ 
ed at least two thousand citizens. Some people are more pleased 
with the new population than others. Now, if we want a good boot 
or shoe, we must send East for them as before.” 

If this one case illustrates all others, what real benefit has the 
State or city received from these thoroughfares and manufactories 
where the coolies are wholly employed ? We have exchanged 
about three intelligent Americans for about one ingorant China¬ 
man. During the past ten years we have exchanged 10,000 white 
laborers in San Francisco for 800 coolies, with the loss of seven 
million annually for the gain of two million. The citizens would 
have been permanent, but the heathen go when they get ready. 
The citizen would have benefited society, but the heathen is a dam¬ 
age and nuisance, and the goods he manufactures are of inferior 
quality. An average of one hundred houses are left vacant to ten 
occupied by the substitutes. It has diminished the price of rents 






73 


and the value of property in all the region roundabout where they 
live, just as it has the price of the citizens’ labor and the value of 
the goods they have made. This depreciation of society and prop¬ 
erty applies only to agriculturists and manufacturers who compete 
in market; while the railroad monopolies make the difference in wa¬ 
ges clear profits. Having no competition they ask as much or more 
i for freight and fares than they would if citizens were employed. In 
either case the people are the losers, while the proprietors reap 
a temporary benefit. And if nobody is benefited but the monop¬ 
olies, manufactories, and coolies who carry off all they earn over a 
living, of what utility are the railroads, new manufactories, and 
cheap laborers, to promote the moral or material interests of the 
State ? Is it a sign of national prosperity when proprietors are 
growing rich, the people growing poor, and the citizen laborer 
swapped off for a serf? If such a system of moral science and po¬ 
litical economy becomes universal and fixed, how long before the 
home market of every description would feel it ? How long before 
all departments of human society and industry must suffer ? If the 
coolies manufacture doors, windows, sash and blinds, boots ana 
shoes, cloths and shirts, brooms and baskets, but never use these 
things ; if he produces all these things, and consumes little or noth- 
¥ ing, how is the State benefited; how is the proprietor benefited ? 
If the citizen population leave as the coolies come, to whom will he 
sell his goods ? 

Besides, the Chinaman soon learns to buy, sell, and manufacture 
for himself. If white men and negroes leave, to whom will the boss 
coolie sell his own goods ? It is well to bear in mind that only the 
poor class of Chinese Tartars are here now. As soon as the rich 
ascertain that they can make permanent investments here and 
remain a permanent Turanean race, they will come, and pay more 
for American clerks than you can, buy and sell all kinds of Amer¬ 
ican goods cheaper than any Jew can afford to, because his respon¬ 
sibilities and living are seven tenths less than what is required to 
make an American garbinger a decent living. What is to hinder 
them from building their own ships and steamers, to carry their 
own slaves and teas ; railroads and telegraph lines to compete with 
the merchants and rich, as well as the more simple arts. When 
that time comes the poor, white trash will patronize the commerce 
and traders who carry and sell goods to them the cheapest. Then 
the monopolies will learn too late that they have, like a blind 
Samson, removed the pillars that let the temple of freedom down 
on their own pates. 

After a fair trial of twenty years on this Coast, the coolie trade 
has been found wanting in any particular to benefit the public, and 
its effect upon our children in the future presents a gloomy pros¬ 
pect. The international law regulating Chinese commerce was in¬ 
tended, no doubt, to benefit the Chinamen and all the people now 
in the Union, but the good of the American people has not been 




74 


consulted. Our country is benefited only when a class of emigrants 
identify themselves with our permanent improvements and national 
institutions, but when a class of people are permitted to supply all 
the demands of ordinary labor as an inferior to a superior race, the 
monopolies and coolies are enriched, but the toiling, taxpaying 
citizens are degraded, and the whole country impoverished. A 
country is benefited when the laboring people are equal in franchise 
and responsibility, supporting families, schools, and building up 
permanent homes, but the coolie is an alien, makes no permanent 
improvement, with few exceptions multiplies no families, and sup¬ 
ports no schools. A country is benefited when the laborers pur¬ 
chase and consume their own productions, and make their best 
market at home, but the coolie purchases and consumes no Amer¬ 
ican production he can possibly avoid. In a word he does nothing 
willingly to support the country that protects him in advantages 
superior to the citizens’, because he has no object in view but to 
fleece us and leave with the spoils when his time comes. Not so 
with any European race, notwithstanding they may come under con¬ 
tract to work for other parties till the passage is paid for a stipu¬ 
lated price, because they are free men in the Government, eligible 
to all it guarantees to a Governor ; they are identified with our relig¬ 
ious and civil institutions, contributing to its permanent population ' 
of citizens, improvements, and schools, and hence demand the same 
wages. They come to stay with and help to build us up ; therefore 
we delight to welcome and esteem them as brothers in all respects ; 
but the coolie comes to help tear us down and “ swartout ” with the 
coin, therefore he is unwelcome to the people. It is wholly an in¬ 
dividual speculation. As the old kidnappers and slave traders 
made more money than the planters and families who bought and 
hired them, so the Chinese procurers and American importers 
make more money on the coolie trade than those who buy and hire 
them. Their masters and employers, their governors and seducers 
only are benefited by their presence and labor, while all China is 
relieved for the time by the exodus of an overburdened and useless 
population, to the immense injury of all the real interests of Amer¬ 
ican citizens and free institutions. 

All this may be illustrated by an example reported in the Chron¬ 
icle. Dr. H. is an extensive fruit grower in the Santa Clara Valley. 
Patrick is the farm hand, but Chinamen are wholly employed to 
raise the fruit. Patrick, with the rewards of his toil, has bought a 
few acres ot land in the valley, on which he now has a house for 
his wife and three children. Pie has stocked his farm with cows, 
pigs, and poultry to the extent of his ability. All his earnings go 
to the support of his family and the improvementof his small ranch. 
This man is adding by his labor to the permanent wealth of the 
State, and an important service by adding to its (permanent) pop¬ 
ulation. So long as this man lives he will be in a small way a mine 
of wealth to California. 






75 


Now let us see how the account stands on the Chinese side. Dr. 
H. has about thirty of these earning at least one dollar per day if 
not more. Their earnings amount to about nine hundred dollars 
per month, or ten thousand dollars per year. We have seen what 
Patrick did with his earnings, now let us inquire what the China¬ 
men have done or are doing with theirs. Have they bought land 
*with their wages ? Have they built houses with their earnings ? 
Have they got wife and children to support? No. What then 
have they done with the one hundred thousand dollars they have 
earned during the past eight years over a bare living? Hoarded 
it, of course, to carry back with them so soon as they are ready to 
return to China. But Dr. Stone (Congregational clergyman of San 
Francisco) says, “If they carry away our gold they leave behind 
them the results of their labors.” Let any one go to the farm where 
they are at work (or on any public improvement) and point out, if 
they can, any good results to the public from their labors. The 
land on which they have labored for eight years is impoverished 
by excessive cultivation (for the benefit of one man). The wealth 
that was in the soil represents the gold and silver the Chinamen 
have hoarded up, while Patrick’s earnings represent the permanent 
improvement he has made. They leave the railroads and manu¬ 
factories to the monopolies, but they leave the same number of cit¬ 
izens and their families without employment. Instead of enriching 
they rob the people of their means of living, the soil of its product¬ 
iveness, and the State of its currency. From this we see that one 
single Irish immigrant with his family will continue to be a blessing 
by adding to the wealth of our State from year to year, while the 
entire population of Chinese serfs have been and will continue to 
be a curse to the whole country by empoverishing its citizens, and 
extracting from its wealth to the end of time. 


THE CHINESE QUESTION MUST BE DISCUSSED. 

The following sentiments, published in the Bulletin , expresses 
the mind of all anti-coolie people : “ It is evident that the discus¬ 
sion of the Chinese question is to be forced upon the people of this 
State. In the first place the importation of Chinese has nearly 
doubled within a few months. Instead of the annual ten thousand 
the number has swelled to such an extent that we shall probably 
have’from twenty to thirty thousand new arrivals this year. The 
English line of steamers gives us double the number of trips be¬ 
tween this and China ports. As the facilities increase in about the 
same ratio the number of Chinese landing here from month to 





76 


month increases. If the steamship service were augmented so that 
a steamer arrived every week from China, the number of Chinese 
coming to the country would be quadrupled. This fact has not 
escaped the attention of those who are looking anxiously for a so¬ 
lution of the question that will do no violence to the industrial and 
political economy of the whole country. 

The great majority of the industrial classes are disposed to treat*' 
the question with a candor and intelligence worthy of thoughtful 
citizens. They are opposed to mobs and all exhibitions of brutal 
violence. The Chinese come under the protection of law and must 
depart under the same protection. Any exhibition of unlawful 
violence toward the Chinese would defeat such legislation by Con¬ 
gress that is needed to check their importation. No solution of the 
question can be reached by physical force. 

We have been seeking a large augmentation of Asiatic trade, 
but thus far the most prominent item of that trade has been coolies. 
They are brought here, not by any natural process of immigration, 
but by a forced process of importation. We have also to do with 
the fact that our subsidy to the China steamship line is directly con¬ 
nected not only with the large increase of coolies, but with the 
actual importation of Chinese prostitutes into this city. The ques¬ 
tion is one that is certain to agitate the country on a large scale,,, 
and which Congress will be called upon to meet and settle in some 
way consistent with justice and national equity.” 

Another incidental fact comes in here, the importation of coolies 
will never solve the question of “ cheap labor ” to the satisfaction 
of the capitalist nor yet to the satisfaction of the people. When 
the coolies become skilled laborers (as they surely will) they will 
demand the wages of citizens, when absent, and when they return, 
drop down again to cheap wages. It is not cheap labor that we 
want to propel our institutions so much as intelligent immigrants 
to be incorporated into the country, adopting its laws, language, 
and customs, with its industrial and political economy. Some tem¬ 
porary advantage may have been gained to the importers and a few 
landed speculators by the cheap labor of these coolies, but in the 
long run it has not been found cheap enough to balance its many 
disadvantages. 

Slave labor in the broadest view of industrial economy never 
has been found cheap. Nor will coolie labor be cheap in the long 
run (nor will it run long without a revolution), because the laborer 
himself makes no progress. He has no new wants, invents nothing, 
creates no new industry, except under the control of others, and 
buys nothing except the bare necessities to preserve existence. 
Every European immigrant adds his wealth to the country. The 
more money he has, the more facilities for creating additional 
wealth. His wants increase with his means. He receives larger 
wages than a coolie, and the contractor receives an equitable divi- 




77 


dend for his investment without “ Robbing Peter to pay Paul,” and 
this adds more to the wealth of the community. 

Good men differ in opinion about the slavery feature of the coolie 
trade. The Sacramento Union says, “The Portuguese annually 
carry from China twenty thousand coolies. The Portuguese are 
also at the head of the East and West African slave trade. Coolie- 
ism, as well as the African slave trade, should be declared and pun¬ 
ished as piracy by the law of nations.” But the Rev. Dr. Stone, of 
San Francisco, says he can see no slavery, or evidence of wrong 
in the Chinese coolie system, and wishes it could be applied to im¬ 
migrants to California from the East and Europe ! 

The Bulletin says that “An English Court at Hongkong has de¬ 
cided that the coolie trade is the slave trade. The bulk of Chinese 
who come to this country are consigned [like any other goods or 
chattels] to companies who have large capital. They come under 
contract, and work under that contract [in a slave’s condition] after 
their arrival. They are not immigrants coming to take root in a 
new soil, but gangs of imported men selected without any reference 
to character or intelligence [to make the difference between the 
wages of a coolie and a citizen]. But the coolie who may be cheap 
to-day is not cheap to-morrow. And that element of industrial 
strength counted upon one day is sure to become an element of 
weakness on another day. * * There has not been a subject in 

centuries that has assumed the aspect of the Chinese question. 
We have reached out after the Asiatic trade, and it is not so much 
wealth that is poured in as the Chinamen. We have clamored for 
cheap labor and have got the Chinaman, who is not cheap in the 
best sense. The results have disappointed us. 

But we are not to drive the Chinamen out because in the squeez¬ 
ing process he gets the better of us. The whole question is lifted 
above commercial considerations. When the current of importa¬ 
tion did not swell above ten or twelve thousand a year, and nearly as 
many returned as came [keeping the number comparatively small], 
the question was taking care of itself. But now, when by rapid 
stages the number may swell to fifty or one hundred thousand a 
year, and no man can limit the number or bound the probabilities 
of this influx, what is to be done ? 

If six or eight great American corporations were organized in 
Liverpool to take possession of half a million of manumitted slaves 
from Georgia and Louisiana, and induct them into all the industries 
of that city (and the whole empire of Great Britain) to do the menial 
service one half less than the poorest citizens can do it and live, 
actually setting the poor aside as idle spectators, how long before 
the'subject would get into Parliament and be there settled on the 
side of the citizens ? The manumitted slaves and the Chinamen 
have a right to emigrate anywhere as free men to better their con¬ 
dition. But this right is subordinate to the right of communities 
to protect themselves. 

4 




78 


And just here the whole question converges. Whenever the 
evils of Chinese immigration or importation threaten to disturb the 
peace and prosperity of the whole country, Congress will be asked 
for a protection ; commerce, the Asiatic trade, steamship, railroad, 
and Chinese companies, and all other personal interests will be sub¬ 
ordinate to the greater one of settling the Chinese question for the 
public good, so that its threatened evils will be averted, and so 
justly done that it will remain settled for all coming time.” 


THE COOLIES AND REAL ESTATE OWNERS. 

The Shop and Senate says, “The coolie is an elephant won by 
the United States in the great lottery of commerce. But we neg¬ 
lected to figure up the cost of labor that was to make a few men 
rich by bringing poverty to a large majority of our people, and now 
we are suffering the consequences. Every coolie that takes the 
place of a citizen drives from our city not only the man who takes 
his place, but the family, too, must go. 

It is estimated that we have a population in San Francisco sup¬ 
ported by one fifth of it; i. e ., one fifth of our population labor for 
the support of four fifths, including women, children, idiots, etc. 
The coolies have no incumbrances of that kind. They have no 
families to support. Their idiots and old, sick people are turned 
into the streets, often, to be cared for by Providence. The result 
of this condition of things is, that twenty thousand coolies take the 
place of one hundred thousand citizen population, or two thirds of 
the population of our city. Let us now suppose that twenty thou¬ 
sand citizen workmen could be employed in this city at wages that 
would'support their families, that would give us one hundred thou¬ 
sand inhabitants, who would occupy ten thousand houses. This 
would be quite a city of itself. 

Suppose, again, that the parties employing these citizen workmen 
find that they can employ coolies at half the price given to citizen 
laborers, and then discharge their countrymen for the coolies. 
Having no work, these twenty thousand citizens out of employment 
must of necessity go where their labor will command a living price, 
so they leave their ten thousand houses to be occupied by competi¬ 
tors. Now, let us see, for the benefit of real estate owners, how 
near they would come to filling those houses left vacant. We are 
very creditably informed that the Globe hotel in this city, from top 
to bottom, and underground, entertains twenty-five hundred coolies. 
This house stands on a piece of ground sixty feet square ; so that 
in the same ratio one hundred and eighty feet, or less than a block 





79 


of ground, would accommodate the whole living mass of twenty- 
thousand Pagans. 

This picture is not overdrawn, but true to life. In this way we 
should have two thirds of our city depopulated to accommodate a 
single block of swarming coolie workmen, who are making articles 
for which there is no possible chance of sale, as the consuming 
population have been displaced and obliged to leave the city. In 
this case real estate owners will find their property depreciating 
and not bringing enough to pay taxes and insurance. 

Apply this illustration to a larger or smaller scale and the result 
is now, and will ever be, the same effect of coolie trade on real 
estate. 

Besides, no building once occupied by the coolies will ever again 
bring one half its value before it was thus occupied. If the China¬ 
men are prohibited, and those now here depart, no European would 
occupy a dwelling once inhabited by the coolies, however thoroughly 
it might be renovated, for fear of some contagious disease. The 
fact that the Chinamen are invading all departments of industry, 
driving thousands of young men from the thoroughfares, simple 
arts, and common labor ; mechanics from the workshops, and tillers 
+ from the soil, nurseries, and gardens, and our women from the sew¬ 
ing machines and domestic service, to fill the pockets of greedy 
men by impoverishing their neighbors, is full enough to rouse the 
passions of a people who have been nurture^ in the lap of freedom. 
But when, in addition to all this, they menace us with a fearful pes¬ 
tilence hitherto unknown in America, we cannot escape retributive 
vengeance if we permit the heathen races to mingle with our popu¬ 
lation. Even now the grim monster threatens us in the form of 
Asiatic small pox or black leprosy—a scourge the most revolting 
and terrible of all the diseases that have afflicted mankind since 
the world began. No human skill can relieve the leper from his 
lingering torture. No sun ever bears on his rays a genial warmth 
for him. For him no flower ever blooms, no peace ever relieves 
his night of despair. Once smitten he lives and breathes an ani¬ 
mated charnel house till he dies. 

If any person desires to know more of this disease I refer him 
to the Overland Monthly (July, 1873, page 89). If it be true that 
the unbridled licentiousness of the heathen begets the seed of the 
leper’s plague, scattering it broadcast, nourishing and increasing 
by promiscuous intercourse, how can the importation of these men 
and especially thousands of these licentious women to prolong a 
promiscuous intercourse with our people, be anything but the basest 
criminality ? 




80 


IS THERE ANY REASONABLE PROSPECT THAT 
WE WILL EVER BRING THE PAGANS AS A 
RACE, IN THE CONDITION OF SLAVES, UP 
TO OUR STANDARD OF MORALS AND CIVIL¬ 
IZATION ? 

The population of China and Chinese Tartary is more than four 
hundred million. We boast of about forty million, or one in ten. 
Now, suppose we allow this incorporated monopoly to import one 
tenth, or any number, to America as an independent race of idola- 
tors, unfit to be citizens but under their own government, equal in 
the advantages of labor and trade, having their own schools and 
idol temples. A struggle for the ascendancy begins. First, in the 
price of wages for common labor. In that we are already defeated. 
That is what they came for; the victory is theirs. Secondly, in 
morals and political economy. We must bring these people up to 
our Christianity and civilization, or they will bring our children 
down to their barbarism and vice. If this is true, judging from the 
past and our own short history, are we likely to Americanize the 
Chinamen, or, is there not more prospect that the Chinamen will 
barbarize the Americafi ? Are we likely to raise them, as a race, up 
to our plain, socially and politically, while we force them to occupy 
the condition of slaves, and look down upon them as a horde of bar¬ 
barians, fit only to be “ hewers of wood and drawers of water; ” or 
will our children by constant association, and especially those who 
must work on a par with them witnessing their shameful immorali¬ 
ties, be more likely to sink to a lower depth of degradation than 
that which the pagans now fill in the scale of humanity ? 

The population of California is about four hundred thousand, the 
coolies, male and female, not less than seventy-five thousand ; how 
long will it take them at this rate to overwhelm us by the weight of 
numbers ? If you turn the most intelligent and highly cultivated 
gentleman out into the forest with no other companions he would 
soon become a wild man of the woods. The same rule of degen¬ 
eration has operated among men who have lived for years without 
the refining influence of ladies in the California mines. Confine a 
single Christian with a number of infidel men and women, and you 
wbuld find but few Daniels in these days. By the same law of nat¬ 
ure the pagan, simply by the power of numbers and association, 
would overshadow and absorb the children of civilized races who 
are obliged to live and compete with them in the means of living. 




81 


THE NEXT EVIL THAT NATURALLY ACCOM¬ 
MODATES ITSELF TO THE NUMERICAL 
STRENGTH OF THE COOLIES IS A LANDED 
ARISTOCRACY. 

It is no mere fancy sketch when I say that California is the fa¬ 
vored spot where the Divine wisdom has centralized all the climates 
and productions of the globe. We are sheltered from the drifting 
snows and freezing winters of the East ; we are protected from the 
long and gloomy rains of the North ; we are free from the malaria 
and burning heat of the South ; we are right where the fruits of all 
other tropics mature and ripen ; where the grains and grasses of 
all other climes grow, and in luxurious abundance ; we have all 
that heart can wish or soul desire of political, educational, and 
religious liberty richly to enjoy. Now, if we sell out this goodly 
inheritance little by little to a moneyed aristocracy who will divide 
and cultivate the whole land in princely plantations, make the 
daughters of the poor the mistresses of harems, and their brothers 
drunken drivers of the peons, we shall only lack a pair of long ears 
to claim kindred with the native Jackass rabbits. But what is to 
hinder ? 

If the pagans increase and the native population of laborers 
leave, the small farmers will become disgusted and sell out to the 
larger ones who offer a high price to get rid of them. I am in¬ 
formed by gentlemen, who have a right to know, that two thirds of 
the arable land fit for tillage and stock in the rich valleys of Cali¬ 
fornia is owned by men living within the circle of one hundred miles 
from San Francisco, and occupied by renters. If the coolies are 
permitted to land in unlimited numbers, how long will it take for 
these landed monopolies, steamship, railroad, and Chinese com¬ 
panies to control the industries, real estate, commerce, and legis¬ 
lation of this whole Coast ? It would be accomplished in an in¬ 
credibly short time. How long would it take to establish the old 
Southern palatial mansion on a plantation with Chinese quarters 
near by ? 

How long would it take such a system of cheap labor like this to 
produce the old English feudal system of landlords whose oppres¬ 
sion is even now crying to God for vengeance ? Where one young 
man can ride over an estate having on it one hundred and fifty 
miles of hail way and four of the most magnificent castles of Great 
Britain. All over either one of these great estates are scores of 
men, women, and children scattered like herds, at work from twelve 
to fourteen hours a day, for two dollars and fifty cents a week. 
These people live in the most miserable, filthy huts with ground 
floors and leaky roofs, holes in the walls for windows, and bare 




82 


boards for beds. Their dens are often located in damp fens with 
the seeds of disease scattered all about them, poor and scanty food, 
with bad ventilation. A cheap-labor system deprives them of all 
facilities for comforts, health, or cleanliness. Sometimes a wife or 
daughter of these landlords will take a pious fit, and go down 
among these “poor sinners” with a tract and bit of bread, to claim 
the reputation of being “Christ-like.” 

If the heir to such an estate can do this in Scotland, why not do 
the same, with a more oppressive peonage, in America ? The ten¬ 
dency of this Coast is to a landed aristocracy. The monopolies 
have no disposition to sell, but always willing to invest in more 
land. The high taxes, increasing freight and fares, with the ad¬ 
vantages that middlemen take of them in market, together with the 
increasing swarm of coolies to take the common labor from their 
sons and daughters, comftels the small farmers to sell to the larger 
ones, or be sold by the sheriff. Relatively, the number of men 
owning small farms on this Coast is less now than at any other 
time. Why is it that France has so soon paid nine tenths of her 
enormous war indemnity to Germany? It is because her lands 
are worked by small farmers, consequently there is an elasticity, 
a recuperative power which a people who are the slaves of greedy 
land-sharks do not possess. Let the coolie trade go on unchecked, 
and this Coast will soon boast its immense estates worked by Chi¬ 
nese, while every year will more and more “ freeze out ” the small 
farmers, and repudiate the National debt. In proportion as the 
number of men who own and work the land grows less, the power 
of the combination of capital to influence the municipal Courts and 
rule the people grows more fearful and less approachable. There 
is a volcanic fire slumbering underneath the social and political life 
of this nation that will, if not checked, throw out its red-hot lava 
too late to be extinguished till the nation is consumed. If the 
laboring citizens continue to leave for coolies, what becomes of 
popular civilization ? If the prosperity of any country depends 
upon the general diffusion of land and knowledge among all the 
people, what will become of your schools, churches, and missiona¬ 
ries when the land is owned by a few and worked by serfs ? 
Where are your manufactories, railroads, and commerce itself? 

'No European population ever did mix on equal terms with an 
Asiatic race, much less as slaves and peons, without becoming 
enervated and corrupt. In a very few years the masses became 
subject to a tyrannical despotism of learning, religion, and wealth. 
All history, sacred and profane, teaches us that, whenever the two 
people have come together in equal, independent competition, a 
mutual destruction has been the result. The free, bold, and ener¬ 
getic Greeks founded colonies with the Asiatics. They rose to 
power, wealth, and magnificence. They were renowned for their 
learning and wealth many years. The pagans were not permitted 
to be their equals in government. They continued to increase in 




83 


numbers but not intelligence. They occupied the same position 
to the Greeks as the Tartar Chinese do to the Americans to-day. 
The common people by force of necessity , and the children of the 
rich by force of depravity, mixed with the pagans and became 
morally corrupted and physically enervated in their national char- 
^ acter and strength. When at length the Persian invader came 
upon them they scarcely struck a blow in self-defense, and fell an 
easy prey. But when the conqueror crossed into Europe, to attack 
a people not tainted and enervated with pagan blood and habit, he 
found that Marathon and Thermopylae were too much for him. 
But the fate that befell the Jews every time they mingled with the 
heathen ; the fate that has always befallen ail European races 
when they admitted the old. effete paganism of the Asiatics into 
their political economy as a low race of servants, is sure to befall 
America if she does not take warning by the past. 


MONUMENTS OF CHEAP LABOR. 

The Ministers’ Code says : “In comparison with the monuments 
of ancient grandeur reared by cheap labor we point you to our 
railroads ; ” and, he might have said, one hundred thousand pagans 
imported to build them. We must confess that the Central Pacific 
Railroad and Steam Navigation Companies come nearer being 
monuments of a cheap-labor system, than any other works of art 
or industry found upon this Continent; but that they have been a 
permanent improvement to the whole country as the monuments of 
American industry, no man can prove. Look at some of the 
ancient monuments to which our Railroad Corporations are truth¬ 
fully compared as the result of cheap labor. Go first to Egypt; all 
those ancient ruins and relics that show signs of palatial grandeur 
and so much excite the curiosity of the tourist, where the Israelites 
made bricks without straw, are the monuments of cheap labor. 
Pass on to Greece and Rome where the ruins of their ancient 
magnificence and works of art astonish the world ; but by fostering 
the institution of servile labor, they fall an easy prey to the North¬ 
ern barbarians. These relics of ancient grandeur are the monu¬ 
ments of cheay labor ; but did they do them any permanent good ? 
Did they work out any “ benign institutions ” to be transmitted as 
blessings to their posterity ? Let the ardent admirers of the cheap- 
labor system visit those countries where labor is the least rewarded, 
with capital and Government in the hands of the few, if he wishes 
to see the ultimate results of oppressing the poor. The moral and 
physical degradation of all Asiatic countries are at this moment 





84 


(India and China the most noted examples) an exemplification of a 
cheap-labor system, where a day’s work is worth a few cents, and a 
man’s life scarcely nothing. The six Chinese companies in San 
Francisco and their locust-like swarms of pagan serfs, bought and 
sold as goods and chatties, now coming in upon us to eat out our 
substance, are monuments reared by cheap labor. In like manner 
the Mission Woolen Mills, the sugar-beet manufactories, the man¬ 
ufactories of boots, shoes, clothing, and laundries ; all famliies who 
employ them in the kitchen and on the farm, or in any kind of serv¬ 
ice—are monuments of cheap labor, that enrich the proprietor by 
defrading and impoverishing their countrymen. The monuments 
of American institutions are reared by the employment of those 
only who are equal and eligible to the advantages of labor and law. 

But are the railroads east of the Sierras, steam engines and 
telegraphic wires, manufacturies and intellectual inventions, insti¬ 
tutions of learning and religion, with a national splendor of pros¬ 
perity, that has excited the envy and admiration of all other earthly 
potentates and powers, the monuments of cheap labor ? The mo¬ 
numents reared by that kind of cheap labor in Southern States are 
before your eyes. Do you admire them ? Did they produce an 
open Bible and free pulpit, free speech and free press, free trade 
and free schools ? Were the cheap laborers dignified and brought 
up to the Christianity and civilization of the masters? Were the 
dependent citizens made rich and refined ? Did they ultimately 
become a blessing to either the cheap laborer, the master, the poor 
citizen, and the whole country ? Would you like to add another 
monument of cheap labor to the scroll of time ? Are all these old, 
blood-bought blessings the monuments of paganism and cheap 
labor ? Did our Pilgrim fathers land on Plymouth Rock to estab¬ 
lish a system of robbing the many to enrich the few? No; they 
came here to escape the tyrannies and cheap-labor systems of the 
old world ; to establish a Government of equal civil and religious 
liberty without caste. Freedom to all and slavery to none, equal 
rights to all, exclusive privileges to none. From this fundamental 
principal of equal Government has come down to us the monu¬ 
ments of freedom and civilization we possess to-day. 

Now, if we will not let the monumental fingers of those ancient 
nations, reared by cheap labor, once distinguished for their science, 
art, and patrician grandeur, point us to their downfall, then let the 
lessons that Divine providence more recently taught us, serve as a 
warning to beware how we again attempt to make those broad 
distinctions in a Government of equal rights in season to avoid a 
judgment more severe. Let us beware lest the monuments of our 
present greatness, reared by freedom and equality, shall become to 
our posterity what the relics of ancient Greece, Egypt, Rome, and 
African slavery are to us, admired only as stupenduous wrecks not 
yet effaced by the finger of time. 




85 


AGRICULTURAL AND HORTICULTURAL vs. COO¬ 
LIE LABOR. 

Employers on this Coast say their experience gives preference 
- to the German laborers for general work, but as a specialty the 
Chinaman is preferred. All this is natural and would work no in¬ 
jury to the whole country, providing you give the Chinaman the 
same wages that you do the discharged German. If the Chinaman 
can perform more labor than the German in a given case, then he 
is worth more to the employer, and for that reason his labor in 
that case should demand higher instead of lower wages. The price 
of labor always was and always will be regulated by demand and 
supply the same as any commodity standing in the market place. 
If the Chinaman is worth more than the German, surely the em¬ 
ployer can afford to give him as much as he paid the displaced Ger¬ 
man. This would preserve an equilibrium in society and the in¬ 
tegrity of the Government; for, though the Chinaman lived one 
hundred per cent, less than the German, if he received the same 
wages there would be no opportunity for speculation in the item of 
r wages, and consequently no more call for importing the Chinamen 
than the Germans. He who gathered much, would have no cause 
to boast over him who gathered little ; and he who gathered or 
saved little of his wages would have no cause to complain of him 
who gathered or saved much of his earnings, because there was 
equality in Government and wages. If upon this principle of equal 
Government and wages the Asiatic fingers are more nimble and 
adapted to wash, cook, do any work, to pick the small fruits of the 
fields than the clumsy hands of the other races, let them do it, by 
all means, if they come at all. But if you make a specialty of him, 
a serf, a savage, a slave, the old “ Liberty Bell ” will ring an alarm. 
If you cannot do this with safety, then the law of self-preservation 
requires that the people prohibit their coming at all. The work of 
the nation is the natural right of the people, as the land, water, air, 
and ballot. It cannot be alienated from the people without provid¬ 
ing a living independent of work. If we discriminate between the 
Mongolian and all other races whom we invite to participate in our 
civil and religious institutions and withhold an equality in Govern¬ 
ment and price of wages, we introduce a slavery feature, that will 
gradually work its way into all the social and industrial depart¬ 
ments of the Government till it creates an aristocracy of masters, 
and servants. It is this policy of equalizing the ballot and price of 
labor among all classes who do the nation’s work, that puts labor 
on'a par with capital, that enriches the employer and rewards the 
workmen, that has made this great Yankee nation just what it is. 

4* 




86 


LABOR-SAVING MACHINERY vs. COOLIE LABOR. 

Pro-coolie advocates assert that the importation of the pagans, as 
serfs, multiply industries and enrich the country by creating a de¬ 
mand for more skilled laborers, the same as the introduction of 
labor-saving machinery. This statement is a contradiction of well- 
known facts. There is a radical difference in the working and re¬ 
sults produced by the two machines. When Divine wisdom gives 
a man intellectual power to seize upon the forces of nature and 
make them instruments in his hands to overcome the obstacles of 
nature itself, practically these forces of nature become his servants, 
and by just that much is man redeemed from the curse that he 
must earn his bread by the “sweat of his brow.’’ Every such in¬ 
vention lifts the human family to a higher plain of industrial enter¬ 
prise and intelligent aspiration. Every invention that economizes 
time and expense by utilizing the raw material God has provided 
for us so as to increase the comforts and add to the convenience of 
all the people, enriches the State, multiplies industries, and creates 
demand for more citizen labor. Every such invention implies 
growth and expansion, capability and power to develop the natural 
resources of wealth and intellect of the whole country. Every such 
machine enables us to successfully overcome the obstacles that 
nature interposes. It gives us the benefit of, and the advantage 
over, the accumulated science, art, and improvement of all past ages. 
Any man who invents such a machine is a benefactor, because he 
helps to lift the burden of the primal curse from the shoulders of 
his fellow by pressing into his service the forces of nature. 

Now, will any investigating mind presume to advocate before an 
enlightened people that there is a parallel between this proverbially 
unprogressive race of semi-barbarians and the labor-saving machines 
of our time ? If the mere promulgation of a new discovery in the 
working of nature’s laws, or the combination of the mechanical 
powers, elevates the public mind, stimulating the inventor to make 
greater application, how much more inspiring when it is made a 
demonstrated practical utility ! Can we claim any such results 
from the incoming heathen ? Is the public in an exstacy of rejoic¬ 
ing because new industries are multipled for the working classes, 
and an increased demand for citizen laborers on the railroads and 
farms, in manufactories, hotels, and kitchens ; increasing the cir¬ 
culating medium, the progress of internal improvement, and enrich¬ 
ing the whole country, because the coolies have come among us ? 
Is it not the reverse of all this ? 

It is no detriment to the workingman or the public when a labor- 
saving machine is invented : first, because it retains the same 
men to work it that were employed before the machine came into 




87 


the field ; secondly, having no power of volition to work itself, it 
develops new resources and creates a demand for more citizens to 
do the work ; thirdly, because it increases the price of labor by in¬ 
creasing the amount of work done in a given time ; fourthly, they 
already employ over five hundred million of men, women, and 
children in their construction and repairs ; they scatter a thousand 
million of dollars annually among the dependent laboring classes 
throughout all the land. They stay in the Union till they are worn 
out and others manufactured at home take their place. In a word, 
they enrich the workmen, the employer, and the whole country as 
such inventions multiply. They steal no chickens, carry nothing 
out of the country, and bring no pestilence into it. 

But how about the “ coolie machine ?” i. Having power of vo¬ 
lition to work and feed itself, it necessarily dispenses with the men 
at work in the field when it comes. 2. As it develops no new in¬ 
dustries, and can do whatever is demanded cheaper than the citizen, 
it creates a demand for more coolie machines. 

Therefore, the argument is no proof, because all experience tes¬ 
tifies the opposite. One useful labor-saving machine employs the 
man already at work and creates a demand for at least two more 
workmen. But one coolie serf actually displaces one citizen and 
his family, if he has one, from the roads, workshops, harvest fields, 
and kitchen, who are the backbone of our country’s wealth and sup¬ 
port. By so much as the pro-coolie advocates can cheapen the 
citizen’s wages by driving the new machine can they shovel into 
their own baskets, and have money to expend upon their lusts, and 
prevent the administration of justice. It is no particuler difference 
to us how extravagantly these men live, provided they do not rob 
the public and grind the face of the poor to get the money. 

We are told that the same objections were urged against canals, 
railroads, steam engines, sewing machines, Irishmen, etc., by the 
farmers, mechanics, seamstresses, and teamsters, as we now urge 
against the coolies. Just so; but when the working people were 
satisfied that the labor-saving machinery and Irishmen were not a 
hindrance ; when they saw that the increase of labor and business 
in one direction was double the decrease of labor in another direc¬ 
tion, they accepted the situation, and became themselves the most 
successful inventors. So, when the inteligent laborers of these 
United States learn that the introduction of pagan coolies creates 
more business than they shut out, they will become its most earnest 
friends. The people had two hundred and forty years’ use of the 
old system of African cheap labor, and ought to have learned by 
that experiance how to utilize that kind of labor-saving machinery 
before they abolished it. But when they saw that its results worked 
directlv against the public prosperity they laid it aside for all time. 
So, if during these fifteen years’ experience the Californians had 
discovered "that their social and commercial condition was being 
promoted, the new labor-saving machinery would have appealed to 




88 


their love of patriotism, progress, and pride of intellectual inven¬ 
tion. If its intrinsic merit had appealed to an innate love of wealth 
and pleasure, instead ofcombining to prohibit their further im¬ 
portation as a public nuisance, they would have contributed their 
money and influence to multiply and circulate them a thousand fold. 
Instead of being looked upon as the implacable enemies of virtue 
and suffering humanity, the importers would have been ranked with 
Howard and Wilberforce, Goodyear and Fulton, Howe and Morse* 
They would have been regarded as the most distinguished benefac¬ 
tors of mankind. But as the working men of this Coast have dis¬ 
covered this hypocritical device of labor-saving machinery is de¬ 
signed to reinstate another system of slavery that would enable one 
man with one million of dollars to centralize and control the entire 
market of a given locality and drive out of the trade all smaller 
capital and producers because they are not able to employ the 
new machines, they have declared their opposition in season: 

“ Lest that too heavenly form pretended ,, 

To hellish falsehoods snare them.” 

We oppose the importation and employment of coolies because 
they will discourage the inventive genius so peculiar to the work¬ 
ing classes, from whom has sprung so much labor-saving ma¬ 
chinery that has distinguished us from all heathen nations. We 
oppose them because they discourage the efforts of all that class 
from whom sprang all that mighty army of the most distinguished 
men in science, generals, and statesmen, who have defended the 
people in peace and war ; who have adorned the learned professions, 
mechanics, and merchants, in agriculture and commerce, from the 
humblest official position to President of the United States. We 
oppose them because the fact that they are serfs enables them to 
choke out the ability of the poor to raise themselves from obscurity 
to .distinction, or exercise the inventive genius, by reducing the 
means of living to a mere subsistence, just as the continued growth 
of weeds absorb the nutricious properties of the soil that should 
go to nourish the more valuable plants. 

We claim, therefore, that our political and religious institutions 
can only be preserved by a constant and thorough weeding out of 
all noxious and foreign excrescences that prevent the outgrowth of 
inventive genius and progress of intellectual culture among all the 
people. To perpetuate these institutions unimpaired, the means of 
education and living must be preserved for all the citizens. No 
other principle could have bound the poor and the rich, capital and 
labor in one common aspiration and destiny for the highest type of 
civilization in the ken of mortals to attain for two hundred and 
fifty years. It is this individual unity of interest that makes us a 
democracy. It is a want of this that makes all Europe groan un¬ 
der the oppressions of petty tyrants to-day. It is the want of this 
that has disqualified the whole heathen world to participate in the 
equal administration of a civilized Government without corrupting 




89 


the whole lump. It was this individual unity of interest, founded 
upon the intellectual culture and moral worth of every citizen that 
gave prosperity to the free Northern States. It was the want of this 
that brought adversity upon the slave-holding States of the South. 
The citizens of the North were industrious and did their own work, 
but the citizens of the South were idle while cheap labor did the 
work. 

England has survived the ravages of intemperance and entailed 
estates for centuries, supporting her own paupers with an almost 
intolerable taxation, but she is not willing to try the coolie system 
of cheap labor, no, not for a moment. It is the last feather that 
breaks the camel’s back. If we permit the coolies to prevail over 
this commonwealth as labor cheap ; it will be a retrograding step 
that will exhaust all that we have gained in the last ten years and 
lead the coming generation into captivity. Can any man in his 
senses fail to see that such an independent class of dependent serfs 
will impoverish that very class of people whose necessity was the 
mother of so much labor-saving machinery that has utilized the 
raw material, developed the resources of our common country, and 
given us the exalted position we occupy among the nations of the 
earth ? 


THE COOLIE INVASION. 

In regard to the coolie invasion the Chronicle says: “The two 
continents of Asia and America stand confronting each other. 
Four million of the Mongolian race—redundant, crowded, throng¬ 
ing together upon river boats, starving upon rice and scant subsist- 
ance—look across the sea to our broad territory where there is 
plenty, space, and labor. The old civilization that for thousands of 
years has kept itself isolated by walls, prejudice, and superstition, 
has obtained a glimpse of the new order of things. The nation 
that holds life so cheap that female infants are murdered and of¬ 
fenders against the law are beheaded, sees in America a vast con¬ 
tinent, capable of supporting a thousand million of inhabitants, 
sparsely settled by forty million. Steam, the electric telegraph, 
commerce, and the proselyting spirit of Christianity has broken 
down the barriers by which the Asiatic had fortified himself against 
the outside and to them the barbarian world. England and Ameri¬ 
ca have thundered with their cannons at their ports of trade ; diplo¬ 
macy has invaded their interior with all the force and pageantry of 
arms ; Pekin has been made the seat of the foreign Ministers and 
Consuls ; the zeal of a foreign religion builded its churches and es¬ 
tablished its altars within their borders ; commerce has carried its 
commodities and penetrated to the very heart of their nation, in- 





90 


citing the wonder of the ignorant and the cupidity oJf their traders ; 
all this in half a hundred years, till now the over-crowded millions 
of China no longer fearing to die in foreign lands have burst the 
shackles of superstition and begun to emigrate. Adventurous pio¬ 
neers have come and spied the land ; they have looked over a coun¬ 
try teeming with gold and grain ; they have seen that this broad 
continent is a place of health and plenty ; here is space for their re¬ 
dundant millions ; here they may come, and sow and harvest, plant 
and reap, and bear back to their own country rich rewards for their 
temporary toil; here we do not murder our girl babies, but raise 
and clothe and dress and educate them ; here we do not live upon 
boats and floating rafts, nor in crowded alleys, but in independent 
homes ; here our workers are citizens, with ambition beyond a mere 
sustenance. These demands have given high wages for labor ; the 
wages of an American worker is to these slaves of heathendom a 
golden mine, the temporary working of which will give them inde¬ 
pendence upon their return to China. Here, too, they find an ava¬ 
ricious class of money kings who, in manufactory, mill, and shop, 
on public works, in mine and field, can gain advantage of their hire. 
By under-working the native laborer they serve themselves and 
steal the work from our toilers, and thus begins the war of races— 
a war for bread ; a contest for life ; a strife that involves Christian 
civilization on this continent. The two streams cannot run parallel, 
but must mingle. The clear waters of the Mississippi runs thick and 
murky to the sea after they mingle with the muddy volume of the 
Missouri; the greater will involve the less. A rat may not eat a 
lion, but a thousand rats will devour the monarch of the forests. It 
is not for to-day that the statesman regards events. The prudent 
thinker and the wise man look to the future. Australia saw the 
danger of Chinese immigration and by the enactment of a simple law 
arrested it. England is menaced by a single gang of Chinese mi¬ 
ners for the Ebbro Vale Company, and the press raises an almost 
united voice against the threatened invasion. 

San Francisco sits at the very gate of this immigration—its 
press dumb, its preachers silent, its public men tongue-tied, while 
they see a commerce of prostitution growing in the very heart of 
our city ; see trades invaded, property depreciated, prosperity ar¬ 
rested, public virtue threatened, and our very Christianity and civi¬ 
lization menaced with destruction. A people that makes its own 
laws can find no mode of arresting the evil. Base and greedy 
money-making monopolies defy public opinion, and while they grow 
fat the mechanic starves. The poor woman who would work must 
starve or sin ; young people who would labor have no alternative 
but to steal; the mechanic who cannot compete with Chinese labor 
may emigrate or endure the shame and poverty that idleness brings. 
Through all this our preachers preach the Fatherhood of God and 
the brotherhood of man ; the shallow politicians cite the cheap 
maxim aud makes it a party slogan. Selfishly, we regard this con- 




91 


tinent as ours ; God’s, but for us. As we love our family, wives, and 
little ones better than strangers, we have a right to love our race 
better than an alien one. As we would preserve this continent for 
ourselves, we would exclude this Chinese family from our soil. As 
we are content with our civilization, we would invite for it no en¬ 
counter with a Pagan one. As we are content with our religion, 
our language and our laws, we would keep far from us this conflict 
of race, and we would devise some rational and peaceful way to 
discourage Chinese immigration to our shores.” 


FOREIGNERS ARE NOT YET ADVISED OF WHAT 

IS GOING ON. 

It is true that a large emigration of Scotch, French, Germans, 
and other nationalities have come to our country this summer. Up 
to this period of our history such emigration has been justifiable, 
and thesfc deluded people are still coming, because they think there 
is but one class of laborers in America. They suppose they will 
be equal in labor and law to all citizens, and, slavery being abol¬ 
ished, there will be no more competition with a lower class of serv¬ 
ants in America. They are not yet fully advised of what is now 
going on. Even the masses of the laboring people, who have most 
at stake, are blinded to the real danger of the coolie trade, but the 
working classes of the Pacific Coast are fully awake to the danger 
of the coming struggle. Some of our Eastern brethren are begin¬ 
ning to apprehend the nature of this debasing evil, and we believe 
some “ Carrier Dove ” will enlighten the peasants of Europe before 
many more thousands are decoyed from their homes, comparative¬ 
ly free, to a land where the citizen laborer is put on a level with a 
serf. There is a surplus of Caucasian and African enfranchised 
laborers now in the United States to do all the work needed to be 
done, twice over. Why do not the railroad men hire them ? Why 
do not the tens of thousands of white and freed men come to our 
aid, if there is room for one hundred thousand coolies ? Simply, 
because the greedy monopoly have waxed fat and kicked against 
their countrymen. The covetousness of capital will not allow labor 
to have its honest, living dues. They can make money by their im- 
and ^.r-portation ; they can employ them for one half less, get the 
same for their productions in market, and treat them more like 
slaves. The average going and coming between Europe and Hong 
Kong to this Coast is not much in favor of Europe. Consequent¬ 
ly, the monopolies and not California are benefited. If the propri¬ 
etors had employed citizens to do the work ; if all the people had 
employed their countrymen and those only whom it would be safe to 





92 


admit into their political Union—the Pacific Coast would have now 
numbered at least three hundred thousand more men, women, and 
children, with a circulation of millions of more money among all this 
intelligent population to propel the industries, cultivate the soil, 
and sustain the schools. If the steamship companies, railroad 
monopolies, and Chinese slave traders are doing or have ever done 
anything to enrich the people of the Pacific Coast in the value of 
taxable property and desirable population for the last ten years, 
they have failed to see it. That “ they have worked hard,” all know 
full well. But they have worked to enrich themselves, by disinher¬ 
iting their countrymen to whom they are mainly indebted for all. 


WHAT HAS THE COOLIE TRADE TO DO WITH 

THE EASTERN STATES? 

Much, every way. Their dependent laboring classes are less 
able to encounter an equal number of coolies in competition for 
wages than the same class of people on the Pacific Coast. They 
have less extent of territory and resources to maintain an indepen¬ 
dence of the cheap laborers. As the people of California have 
never done the most of their mechanical and agricultural work, the 
sudden influx of seventy-five thousand coolies and twenty-five 
thousand vile women would not affect us as the same number would 
the whole New England States, where the majority are dependent 
laborers qualified and accustomed to do the work the coolies would 
be employed to do at much less wages. A large percentage of East¬ 
ern laborers are domiciled, with families, in localities where most 
of the work is done, but on this Coast the great majority of labor¬ 
ers are a migratory class of bachelors who can pick up their blan¬ 
kets and move with less inconvenience, but even they will come to 
the “ Sam-Patch Leap” before many years. It will not do to tell 
these people “they are foolish to be alarmed; that they can always 
find employment in California or anywhere in the United States; 
no matter how many coolies come to our country, there is room 
enough for all.” If they come as our equals, to stay with us, we 
rejoice, but if as slaves, to leave us in poverty, we are alarmed. 
Business men everywhere have an eye to their own profits, without 
regard to individual interests or the public good. They figure 
closely upon the first cost. If a man is doing well, even getting 
rich by employing a citizen at two dollars per day, and he can get 
a coolie for one, he would, in most cases, ship his brother and fam¬ 
ily, and take the coolie to make the dollar. It will not do for the 
working classes to credit any such plausible statements from pro- 





93 


coolie men. To be sure, if a manufacturer can make as much profit 
on each person in his employ as the person gets for his labor, he 
ought to be satisfied ; but, ordinarily, the greediness of avarice man¬ 
ages to figure so as to get all the profit, if possible, while the laborer 
is left with a mere subsistence. Therefore, in view of this pious 
- necessity of cheapening labor, the New England manufacturers are 
beginning to imitate the Pacific monopolies. Their great industrial 
institutions, that have grown wealthy by the employment of so 
many thousands of dependent citizens, are beginning to swap them 
off little by little for pagan serfs. This they do, not from necessity , 
love of country, or any good they may do to the heathen, but be¬ 
cause they can hire them for twenty-five dollars instead of thirty- 
five dollars per month, and get the same price for their goods, while 
they save the neat little sum of one thousand dollars per month on 
each one hundred hands. To do this they must discharge at least 
three hundred citizens, young and old, who have built up their 
manufactories, school houses and churches, hospitals and colleges, 
towns and cities. They must discharge those who have replen¬ 
ished their country with beauty and filled the land with an increas¬ 
ing, happy, and prosperous people, for one hundred heathen slaves 
f who never had, never will have, any part or lot in their country but 
to corrupt and impoverish it. 

Do you say the old employes will retain their accustomed places 
while the coolies create new industries for themselves ? But if 
only one hundred workmen were wanted before the coolies came, 
how do you make that appear ? Oh ! I understand. You intend 
these people shall go from the farm and the workshop to college, 
“ and never contend with the coolies on that level again.” But 
suppose the most of them have neither means or capacity at that 
time of life to come into a successful standard of the learned pro¬ 
fessions and higher literary walks of life, or even to become a good 
missionary to their heathen rivals, what then ? But now as you 
have two hundred instead of one hundred laborers, and only work 
for half of them, when the citizen with a family is in competition 
with the coolies he will be underbid and lose the job, what then ? 
If these displaced operatives could scarcely get a living on thirty- 
five dollars per month, what is their condition with twenty-five dol¬ 
lars per month, in company with coolies, if they work at all ? What 
guarantee have they that the next month will not bring the neces¬ 
sity for a reduction in wages or marching orders ? How many 
years would it take enterprizing monopolies if permitted to supplant 
the entire New England working population with a race of heathen 
idolators as they have already done the Golden State ? 

E)o you say there is an absolute necessity the wages of laborers 
should be reduced to make capital remunerative ? Then let it 
come by employing a citizen or his equal. Let every thing else be 
equal and we ire content. Let it come as a natural sequence, and 
not by forcing upon us an equal number of serfs to prevent the pos- 




94 


sibility of citizen labor at any price. It is said there is honor among 
thieves, but in this case the thieves are without gratitude or honor 
either to the people as individuals or the Government who has sub¬ 
sidized their speculations with millions of dollars that belong to the 
people who have been defrauded and swapped off for the pig-tailed 
disciples of Confucius. 4 - 


INCONVENIENCE TO THE CITIZEN. 

Look at the inconvenience that would result to our countrymen 
if we import the heathen to force them out of their long-accustomed 
occupations and society to learn something new, or seek another 
mode of living. We teach our young men and women, whether 
rich or poor, to learn some useful art by which they can make an 
honest living. We tell them to make a choice and hold on till they 
are masters. We advise them to avoid and despise vacillation 
and quackery. If we call a young man a “ Jack-at-all-trades,” it is 
a reflection ; it implies that he is good for no trade. With what f* 
consistency can we advise or force a skillful people who have spent 
their youth in acquiring a knowledge of some useful avocation, and 
depend upon the dignity of their hands only for a living, to rush up 
into higher plains of industry and more extensive fields of enter- 
prize they know nothing about, and have no means but their handy- 
craft to obtain ? 

Besides, is it not the constant hue and cry that all the learned 
professions are crowded from the telegraph operator to the presi¬ 
dent ? Are not all the ministers, newspapers, and authors urging 
us to learn the boys to work at some useful art, and stick to it, till 
they are independent of work ? 


BUT WHERE SHALL THEY GO? 

Many of them have wives and some children. You would hardly 
expect this vast multitude of countrymen, women, and children to 
leave the woolen mills, rope factories, iron foundries, carpet and 
glass factories, cabinet and shoe shops, hat and tailor shops, nur¬ 
series and gardens, silk and sugar-beet factories, orchards and vine¬ 
yards, railroads, farms, and all the sources of living that a pagan 
may learn and do, and scatter into the mountain £ to hunt new 
e?nployment willingly. You would hardly be so ungrateful as to 






95 


force them away from their old acquaintances, school-houses and 
churches, prayer meetings and means of grace, they have so long 
contributed in common with others to provide. You would hardly 
think they would leave them cheerfully to the full possession of 
three hundred thousand heathen idolators to please a tyrannical, 
£urse-proud aristocracy and a few families in our towns and coun¬ 
try with small incomes, daily suffering for help which they could do 
without, and which at a living price they are not able to command, 
because nine tenths are too lazy and proud to work like the rest of 
us for an honest living, and too poor to pay the rent of the house 
they livq^ in, or the clothes they wear, and much less a decent 
countrywoman a fair price to do the work for them. And what is 
to hinder this demand with a constant increase of coolies ? For, 
whatever objections the poor may urge, the rich will employ the 
cheapest and most servile labor. What will you do with the serv¬ 
ant girls swapped off for coolies? Do you expect the thousands 
of young women who have been excluded from domestic service to 
go right up to dress-makers and school-teachers after they have 
been perfected in the culinary art ? Where will the thousands of 
young women excluded from the manufactories go for a more exalt¬ 
ed living ? Like the young men, they have no time or means to 
Acquire new modes of living. Even if they had, the house is full 
of coolies and the doors shut against them. We have taught these 
women a special art as a means of living ; it is theirs by inherit¬ 
ance ; it is a natural birth-right bequeathed by their parents ; where 
else shall they go ? Is it right for us to disinherit them and adopt 
the same number of pagan boys ? These young women represent 
the industry of all the civilized nationalities. Shall we swap them 
off for boys who represent the lowest and most licentious class of 
humanity for a few dollars difference in their wages? If we en¬ 
courage the coolies we lose every thing good and gain nothing but 
filth ; if we encourage these young women to do our work they 
may become the mothers of thousands of useful and distinguished 
citizens. If we adopt the pagans, what door stands open to receive 
these young women ? It is sad to know from sources of good 
--authority that hundreds of these young women in California, set 
aside from their legitimate employment for a “cheap John” who 
could be treated more like a slave, have on that account been placed 
in circumstances of pinching want, where the weak, moral forces of 
their natures did not resist the temptation that beguiled them with 
enticing words into slavery and shame. It is clear that the coolie 
does not create a new industry for his own living, like other people, 
but shuts out a citizen every time one is employed, and for this 
cause he is a blighting, scathing, burning shame and damning curse 
on all laboring people and the State. 

It cannot be proved that a Chinaman ever developed a single 
new industry on this Coast. Therefore it is better for the State if 
individuals who are not able to transact business without employ- 




96 


ing practical slave-labor, to wait till they can employ a citizen. It 
is better for all poor families with small incomes to dispense with 
servants and live within their own means, than to employ other 
people to do the work for them below living wages. It is better for 
the people and the State that all the extensive vineyards and large V 
landed estates on the Coast become insolvent and sold out by 
pieces to the highest bidder^ than to exclude the citizens for pagan 
slaves to work them. It is better for the people and the State that 
not one acre of swamp land is ever drained, and all manufactories 
in California lately sprung into existence with cheap labor, that 
cannot continue without it, close up and sell out under the sheriff’s 
hammer to-morrow, than to exclude citizens for serfs to run them. 

It would be better for the people of the United States to terminate 
all Asiatic commerce, and suspend all future contemplated railroads, 
and require those now running not to run at all, than to import a 
servile race that will exclude the entire dependent citizen laborer 
from the ordinary means of living, and endanger our political free¬ 
dom to enrich an aristocracy. 

And now, when there are so many thousands of men, women, 
and children, East, West, North, and South, in the mountains and 
valleys, cities and country, suffering for want of comforts in Califoi^ 
nia, because the domestic service, the laundries, and vegetable 
trade is withheld for the heathen ! When so many young men 
who have been so recently invited to share in our vacant lands and 
exalted labor are wandering from store to store, from farm to farm, 
from house to house, with tears of entreaty to obtain employment 
for bread ; when hundreds of stalwart, young men are standing 
along the line of the Central Pacific Railroad to do the commonest 
work, how sad, how cheerless and gloomy the prospect, how alarm¬ 
ing it is to know that the sons of the men who contributed millions 
to build that road are set aside for coolies, while the outlandish 
beneficiaries are reveling in luxury ! Moreover, when thousands of 
families, young men, and women among the poorer classes all over 
the New England States are compelled to toil from sun to sun, and 
often every day in the year, or starve, the pious, enterprising Pur¬ 
itans are beginning to employ the coolies to increase the poverty"" 
and shame ot their countrymen. ' “Boys, why are you throwing 
stones at those frogs ? ” “ For fun , sir ! ” “ Well, it may be fun 

for you, but it is death to the frogs.” It may be well just now for 
the rich to employ the serfs, but it is death to their countrymen. 

My countrymen, be not deceived. If you allow this American 
and Chinese combination of capital to continue their conspiracy 
against labor, upon the present plan of necessity to properly develop 
the industries of our country, and Christian charity to civilize the 
heathen, they will soon demand of you still more arrogant and op¬ 
pressive claims. A distinguished Frenchman recently said of the 
late Napoleon that, “ having gained power by conspiracy, he con- 
tinued to govern them with a contempt for all\the rest of man- 






97 


kind 1” These men seek your property and debasement, not the 
welfare of their countrymen or the good of the heathen. Being 
false and rapacious as the heathen with whom they have conspired 
against you, once in the ascendency, they will consume your free¬ 
dom and rule you with merited contempt. 


THE MAN OF STRAW. 

It is quite common for those who favor the importation of Chi¬ 
namen, to set up a “ man of straw, ” and after laboring hard to over¬ 
throw it, sit down lauding their own philanthropy, and encircle their 
brows with the laurel wreath of victors. These self-elected guard¬ 
ians of the poor heathen would arrogate to themselves all the be¬ 
nevolence and kindness, while they accuse those who differ from 
them with a desire to “ abuse the Chinaman. ” This is the “ man of 
straw ” that they pepper so heartily with their pellets and squibs, 
^low, all who are acquainted with the history of the anti-Chinese 
organizations, know that from the start they have uniformly depre¬ 
cated any unkindness to the Chinese unfortunately among us. Un¬ 
fortunate for them—doubly so for us. Any person of ordinary expe¬ 
rience and intelligence knows that an inferior race, in the position 
of the Chinese in our country, will be inevitably abused, and 
therefore we argue that thg only true benevolence is to let them re¬ 
main at home and save them from the suffering that is sure to 
come upon them, in the anomalous position into which they are 
brought. We have only to look back at the influence of slavery in 
our Southern States ; it cultivated what is called “ the old planta¬ 
tion style,” on one side, with suffering, deception, and loss of manli¬ 
ness on the other. If we would save our vouth from arrogance, 
they must be brought in contact with those they are bound to treat 
as equals. From my window I often see gangs of Chinese at work, 
" with a white boss over them, who needs only the whip to repro¬ 
duce the old plantation pictures ; the whip he has not yet, but he 
may use bricks and blows. Eight out of ten of the inhabitants of 
the Pacific Coast are opposed to the importation of Chinese to com¬ 
pete with them in the price of labor. 

Among them we find men of intelligence and means, honest, re¬ 
liable, thoughtful men, the very bone and sinew of our strength. Is 
it possible that they do not know what they want or need ? In the 
remaining one fifth we may class steamboat and railroad companies, 
a few wealthy farmers, and some manufacturers ; now and then an 
individual whose pride or comfort is promoted with a large class of 
“dead-head” politicians and newspaper men, and some ministers 
with half-fare tickets in their pockets. When we have taken in the 







- 98 - 

great monopolies and their employes and beneficiaries, we'have the 
strength and power of the pro-coolie party. Now, I put it to any 
candid individual, on which side would he expect to find pure, selt- 
denying philanthropy ? The arguments which justify coolie impor- { 
tation will apply equally well to the slave trade, liquor traffic, gam¬ 
bling, or any device by which the few are enriched and the many 
fleeced. Was not the public treated a short time ago to a “ circu¬ 
lar,” purporting to come from the six Chinese companies, warning 
their people not to come here any more ? Was it only a blind; for 
have they not continued to come, in ever-increasing ratio, until our 
last papers tell us seventeen steamers and vessels are now in the 
vicinity of Hongkong for coolies ? “ Where the carcass is there 

will the eagles be gathered together.” The Pacific , published at 
San Francisco, says “ the average pay of unskilled laborers ” is too 
small; for when the laborer has a family he is not even able to sup¬ 
port them decently on it be he ever so temperate. And yet with 
this same paper, “ everything is lovely” on the Chinese question. 
An inconsistency apparent in these philanthropists is, that while 
accusing others of abusing the Chinese, they allow themselves to 
talk and write more than those with whom they find fault. The 
Chinese oracle, Rev. O. Gibson, sometimes emits a rather uncertain- 
sound, but he has learned caution and wisdom compared with Bish¬ 
op Harris, who, in a letter from San Francisco to the M. E. Mission 
Society, writes : “ These ladies ” (of San Francisco) “ see right over 
against their own doors the utmost degredation of womanhood, un¬ 
der the most dark and damning systems of heathenism, and their 
hearts are stirred within them to do something and save heathen 
women here from a life of shame, and a death of despair.” What 
efforts are they making to reform their own sisters ? He also adds, 

“ that eight women are now in the Mission House, S. F.; that some 
have gone back to their masters (to ply their old vocation no doubt), 
“on promise of better treatment; that two have been married, and 
that it cost about one hundred dollars for each woman in the house.” 
These efforts he has described (and for which he urges donations 
of money from the East, naively remarking, that their prospect of _ 
getting funds in San Francisco, not as good as formerly) are about 
as efficacious in putting out this burning shame of our Coast, as an 
old-fashioned tin watering-pot would have been at the Chicago or 
Boston fires. If these people are so great an evil why favor their 
importation ? 

With so much reason might we accuse the judge and jury of abus¬ 
ing the criminal, as to accuse anti-coolie people of wishing to 
“abuse the Chinese,” because they seek and destroy the power of 
the importers to spread these evils the pro-coolie men themselves 
condemn all over the land. 

The man of straw says, we oppose the coolies because they are 
colored. We are not so particular about the shade of a man’s skin, 
providing his heart is not blackened with an avarice that would de- 




99 


vour his neighbor for the sake of gain. It is not a white man’s 
country that we want so much as a free man’s country ; not a barba¬ 
rous, but a civilized, country ; not a heathen, but a Christian coun¬ 
try ; not a nation of serfs, but citizens ; not a land of lordly mo¬ 
nopolists and cringing sycophants of a few rich landholders, with 

-Swarms of abject tenants not so well fed as the rich man’s horses 
and dogs. We want a land of free schools, free thought, free labor, 
free bibles, and freedom to worship the one true God. We want 
virtue, not vice ; prosperity, not poverty; progress, not retrogres¬ 
sion ; intelligence, not ignorance ; purity, not faith ; and health, not 
disease. 

The charge made by protestant ministers generally, that the Pro¬ 
tective Alliance is encouraging hostility to the Chinaman, is a great 
mistake. This union of effort is to put an end to the importation of 
servile labor and prostitutes from any country, and bring our inter¬ 
national relations with China on a par with all other nations—no 
more, no less. The people are not allowed to prohibit this traffic 
because they love Chinamen and women any less now than they 
did fifteen years ago, but because they love their homes and fami¬ 
lies, their freedom and country, more than all Asia. 

^ The hatred first felt against the Chinese is subsiding, but a de¬ 
cided hostility to their importation is increasing. The people are 
satisfied that the wrongs inflicted upon the workingmen and subor¬ 
dinate enterprises lay at other men’s doors, sanctioned by the pres¬ 
ent Government. I know we are a patronizing people, and some of 
the baser sort have treated the heathen roughly, and will continue 
to do if you continue to bring them. But the persons and property 
of the heathen are never molested by the Protective Alliance. 
Nor is there a particle of hatred toward them. On the contrary, 
they are working with the true missionary spirit of early abolition¬ 
ists. They believe the Church and the Government must be puri¬ 
fied from all complicity with the slavery traffic in Chinese men and 
women to save the country from an entire overthrow. 

But suppose we treat these pagans with all the respect due to an 
American. What then ? If they are an inferior , serving a superior , 
race, in the condition of a slave, would kind treatment remove the 
wrongs inflicted on the toiling citizen and his means of living ? Is a 
hungry lioness repulsed by kind treatment toward her whelps? 
Are we to be blinded by this “pious dodge” of kind treatment? 
No ! We see the danger and have prepared ourselves for the com¬ 
ing conflict. Our country was never in greater danger of an over¬ 
throw from African slavery than the peril that threatens us from 
the .Chinese invasion as a substitute for the same thing. 

It is impossible for Eastern people and strangers to comprehend 
the enormity of the evil that surrounds the intelligent industries 
of this Coast. It would be well for our Eastern brethren and 
European neighbors if they would be advised of their own ap¬ 
proaching danger a little in advance by our own experience. 




100 


“ Arr ounce of preventative is worth a pound of cure.” They 
who think the discussion of this subject is unnecessary , “because 
they see no danger of another system of slavery, and can see no 
wrong in the coolie trade,” are themselves in the densest darkness 
of popular ignorance on the question before us. 

A man may read about the Chinese a lifetime and not know a$- 
much about them as one who has lived among them and seen the 
secret working of the new system by the “companies ” for six months. 
Every Californian knows that the coolie trade is slowly devouring 
the wealth and morals of the whole population, and undermining the 
established law of society like the mole at the foot of a tree. Their 
demoralizing virus is circulating through every department of trade 
and poisoning every vein of society from the highest to the lowest. 
Eastern people and foreigners are not yet conscious of these effects 
because they have not lived in contact with the pestilential vermin nor 
come in direct competition with the cheap, servile labor. And a 
large population of this Pacific slope, isolated from the infected 
towns and districts, do not know and will not discover the coming 
struggle till a united alliance of the people shall call their attention 
to the incontrovertible evidence. Hence, the workingmen must re¬ 
organize their old labor associations and circulate intelligence, to.^ 
let those who live in remote places take a peep into this den ot 
thieves, who, like a pestilence, are walking in darkness, and wasting 
our substance at the noontide of day. 

It is wonderful to see how much these brethren, fresh from the 
East, know of the wants and duties of the Pacific Coast; wh^ a 
man who has been here from twenty to twenty-five years feels quite 
abashed in their presence. They prescribe for all the ills of the body 
politic with an ease and facility that reminds one of a quack doctor 
vending an infallible nostrum for all the ills flesh is heir to. Bishop 
Harris goes on to state : “The citizens have organized anti-coolie 
societies, and have now in their employ a Congregational minister 
as a lecturer, whose business it is to organize such societies and 
influence the community against the Chinese.” Well, if the anti- 
Chinese societies have one minister in their employ, I would like to 
ask the visiting brother if he ascertained how many ministers the 
pro-coolie party have in their employ ? Did he take pains to count 
up those who write, and preach, and labor to prove, as the pro-sla¬ 
very ministers did, that this traffic is a divine institution ? As to in¬ 
flaming the community against the Chinese, all who read know the 
anti-coolie lecturers never used language any more incendiary than 
the Rev. Bishop himself has done in regard to the Chinese women. 
Another scare-crow, which is brought up to intimidate the people, 
is the cry, “ it is unconstitutional.” This reminds one of a picture 
in Harper’s during the time of the late war. Madame Columbia is 
represented as seated in sight of burning Washington, with buck¬ 
ets, hose, and fire-engines around her; but with spectacles on nose, 
she is poring over our books of law to see whether it is constitution- 






101 


al to put the fire out. So a great many say, “We know the coolie 
trade is all wrong, but it has become a law and passed into the Con¬ 
stitution, and now we must make the best of it we can.” It is an 
absurdity to suppose that a power that creates cannot change or 
amend its work. American citizens know that the law-making 
-people are a greater power than the Constitution. 


THE CHINESE QUESTION FROM A VOTING STAND¬ 
POINT. 

We transcribe the following sensible remarks from the “ Shop 
and Senate,” because there are many persons, especially in the 
Churches, who advocate the future naturalization of the heathen 
races to prevent their enslavement and the degradation of cheap 
labor ; but if you permit them to still carry on their idolatrous gov¬ 
ernment and worship, the remedy will be worse than the disease. 

^Even now they have a balance of power that would defeat any can¬ 
didate for official position. This is what the monopolies are work¬ 
ing for and all they ask to reduce the working classes to a com¬ 
plete vassalage. If they still lived like heathen they could under¬ 
work the American laborer, and undersell the American merchant, 
producing a poverty and depravity that would be a greater aug¬ 
mentation of the evil than if the ballot was withheld. 

“There is no longer a doubt that all parties, as parties, have 
agreed that the coolie trade is so great an evil that few thoughtful 
people offer arguments in its favor. The prostituting influence of 
their female slavery and filthy condition of their quarters; their pagan 
despotism protected in our Government, and known punishment 
of those who disobey their dictation, are facts that need no argu¬ 
ment to prove. 

Not long since one of the daily papers of this city threw out a 
half-developed threat against the citizens who are agitating oppo¬ 
sition to Chinese immigration, by notifying them that Congress 
might, by a very small change of the naturalization laws, place the 
ballot in fhe hands of the Chinaman. 

We propose to discuss that point for a few moments. In St. 
Louis there are a large number of Chinamen engaged in coopering. 
Their superintendent bears the euphonious name of Ah Lung. 
Sometime in May last he applied to the Criminal Court in that 
city, and declared his intention to become a citizen of the United 
States. The St. Louis Globe says : ‘ That being,properly qualified, 
his first papers were given him ; and he then informed the Judge 
that the Chinamen in America dislike the present administration in 
China, and will therefore declare their intention to become Amer- 
£ 









102 


ican citizens.’ Taking this fact into connection with the threat re¬ 
ferred to, the prospect is not very flattering. 

But we are told that the treaty prevents their naturalization. Let 
us inquire if that is true. The treaty referred to was made by 
Anson Burlingame, on the part of China, and Wm. H. Seward, on 
the part of the United States. 

To make that instrument more sacred, it was signed on the 4th 
day of July, 1868, at Washington City. The alliance thus formed 
was like all other treaties; it made no provision for naturalizing the 
subjects of one nation by that of the other. The Senate finding 
that public opinion was turning its attention to the fact that they 
might be admitted to citizenship, amended the sixth article of the 
treaty by adding : ‘ But nothing herein contained shall be held to 
confer naturalization upon citizens of the United States in China, 
or upon the subjects of China in the United States.’ 

This was an act of deception, to quiet the public mind—nothing 
more. Had they desired to prevent the Chinaman from being 
naturalized, how easy was it to have said : ‘But the people of one 
nation shall not become citizens of the other.’ That would have 
been plain and easily understood ; the question would have been 
settled beyond dispute; but they did not desire that. 

The people continued to talk about it until at the session of Con-" 
gress in 1868 and 1869, when the Judiciary Committee reported a 
bill excluding Chinese from naturalization ; but nothing was done 
with it. The Senate did not pass the bill; hence there is no such 
law in force. 

The very fact that the bill was presented is evidence that the 
Judiciary Committee believed the door was open to their naturali¬ 
zation, and that it ought to be closed ; but they did not close it, nor 
did they wish to do so. 

The Chinese are not excluded by the Constitution, or the laws 
on naturalization ; nor has the treaty anything in it to prevent them 
from becoming citizens. I have submitted the question to an able 
attorney who, after examining the law, says, there is nothing to 
prevent Chinamen from being naturalized. That being the case, 
let us see what is to be the result if they make the application, and 
receive the parchment of an American citizen. 

With the ballot in their hands they will walk up to the polls by 
the side of those who are to the manor born, and vote against the 
short-haired Caucasians. In California, we suppose, there are one 
hundred thousand Chinamen who have no families, and no ties to 
bind them to the country, other than the amount they may make by 
their labor. In five years they may be citizens and entitled to vote. 
If the same number of white men, or citizens, who have families in 
the ratio laid down in our statistics, are in the State, they represent 
five hundred thousand people ; the Chinamen, being the represent¬ 
atives of themselves only, have five to one the advantage of the 
white population. As the Americans can never agree to act as a 
unit, they will always have two parties. 






103 


The Mongolians would act as their masters direct, with one 
party ; hence they would always have the balance of power in 
elections. 

Suppose any great monopoly, or that the monopolists united, 
should desire to carry an election, and fix a Legislature to pass any 
subsidy law, they would only have to buy the hundred thousand 
votes from the six Chinese companies who, with long nails and 
whip-thong tails, sit in judgment, like princes over a dominion of 
voting slaves, and make them do their will. 

The prospect is truly anything but inviting. What think you 
will be the result when a sufficient number shall reach this country 
to control its institutions ? Will our children, now running about 
the streets in their bare feet and throwing stones at the Chinamen, 
be in any better humor then ? Will they be apt to affiliate with the 
Chinese, and work in harmony with them to carry on this Govern¬ 
ment ? It is not very likely. The hatred of these races will in¬ 
crease as the privileges of the Chinese expand, until the blood of 
the Caucasian will freely mingle with that of the Mongolian, and 
both enrich the earth as did the blood of the Northern and South¬ 
ern people. 

» Year after year our boys are becoming men ; they carry with 
them to manhood the malicious opposition to Chinese thdt was en¬ 
gendered in youth, and nothing short of extermination will satisfy 
their desire for revenge. All this is being brought about to gratify 
the desire of a few to get rich off of the trade brought us by the four 
hundred million of people that boast of their civilization, and laugh 
at us as barbarians. 

Our Government passes laws taxing articles of foreign manufact¬ 
ure, so as tO'keep up the price of the article made here. They tell 
us it is for our good; that we get a higher price for our labor, and 
we good, easy souls accept it as a fact, while we see the same labor, 
against which the law provides, being brought here in ships owned 
by men who are fattening on the subsidies taken from the injured 
people and paid to ship companies who are importing a class of 
serfs to do any kind of work cheaper than we can. Still, we fold 
our arms in silence and say no remedy can be provided. If we say 
Congress has no power to change the treaty so as to prevent the 
immigration of the people, while it retains the commerce and with¬ 
holds the ballot from those here, we deny our past history, limit 
our sovereignty, and weaken the confidence of a republican Gov¬ 
ernment to protect itself. We encourage and give the ballot to all 
civilized races, because they bring their families and property, and 
become a part of our people, promoting our virtues, intelligence, 
population, and material wealth. We exclude and withhold the 
ballot from all uncivilized races, because being serfs at home they 
come here as such, bring no families, no property, no love for our 
country, with a system of morality that drags our own race down 
to their level of ignorance and vice. As they easily become vas- 






- 104 - 

sals to the wealthy, with the ballot in their hands, and four hundred 
millions of people to draw upon against forty millions, it is too 
much for us to contemplate. 

With our present system of encouragment, the Chinese, one of 
the lowest pagan races, would be the controlling element in the 
United States in less than ten years. In that event a fearful revo¬ 
lution would be the result. The emperor of China is now employ¬ 
ing in his Army and Navy the learning and skill of American and 
European officers. The monarchies of the old world, ambitious to 
prove republican government a failure, will readily join with his 
celestial majesty, who by this time will have learned all we know 
about commerce, finance, and war, to try his ability and courage in 
a skirmish with the Yankees for their ‘goodly inheritance.’ ‘An 
ounce of preventative is worth a pound of cure.’ If it is not safe 
for them to be trusted with the ballot, it is not safe for them to 
compete with civilized labor, trade, and commerce on any ter?ns 
whatever.” 


THE RIGHT MAN AND THE RIGHT PARTY WILL 

COME. 

The People’s Protective Alliance is not an organized political 
party. Its work is to influence the whole people to oppose the 
coolie trade as the one thing needful to make the nation free. As 
the right party and the right man were produced at the right time 
during the late struggle for freedom, so the developments of the 
next four years will produce the cognomen of a political party that 
will represent the wishes of the people on the subject of servile 
labor. The action and effort of the alliance may promulgate some 
popular sentiments which, after being subjected to severe criticism, 
thorough discussion, and ripened by the sunshine of popular favor, 
may start a germ that will break the outside shell and continue to 
grow till it brings forth some kind of political fruit. 

The Democratic party once led the administration of the govern¬ 
ment for forty years ; but when it joined in a conspiracy with slave¬ 
holders to destroy the Union, the Union destroyed the Democratic 
party. The Republicans have, up to this time, reflected the popu¬ 
lar will; but if the leaders of that party shall lend their influence 
to the monopoly which is importing servile labor and vile women, 
the people will break the yoke, and triumph more gloriously than 
before. We are living in an age of progress. Heretofore political 
parties have governed the people with money and whisky ; but 
those times of ignorance are passing away, and hereafter, if a po¬ 
litical party deserves the control of public affairs, it must consult 
the wishes and interests of the intelligent working mass. A narrow 







105 


and selfish policy, that will admit of servile labor and traffic in 
lewd women for money, will not suit them. They can barely toler¬ 
ate rum-shops, and a little polygamy now and then ; but they can 
not and will not stand the coolie trade. At present the people 
choose their own leaders. If the leaders consult the public good, 
all right ; but if they lead off to consult their private interests, the 
people will refuse to ga and lead them again. It may take a long 
time to accomplish this work, but victory is sure to come. The 
private interests of the hungry lions must yield to the good of the 
commonwealth. In the matter of servile labor, they are wrong 
and the people are right. When they see the wrong, and rise in 
self-defense, they are not easily intimidated by threats or over¬ 
come by flattery. There is no mode of saving ourselves from an¬ 
other civil war but in' a united political action of all the political 
parties. We must imitate the old anti-slavery fathers, and make 
this alliance of labor the popular leader of the people, against the 
coolie trade. The enlightened judgment of an indignant people 
must blockade the invaders, or this aggressive element of tyranny 
and plunder will convert the American Union into a practical aris¬ 
tocracy of slave-holding plantations, with their gangs of filthy jun- 
■4 gles. 


THE WORKING CLASSES CONQUERED THE 

SLAVEHOLDERS. 

It was the omniscient power of workingmen, who, by fair and 
unremitting agitation, conquered African slavery and removed the 
debasing influences that were corrupting the whole commonwealth, 
of Israel ; but before the manacles, cutlasses, and whipping-posts 
are out of sight, the same old monster, ever ready for an opportu¬ 
nity to doom the liberty and living of the common people, is seen 
slowly rising out of the western waters, with a long, black tail in¬ 
stead of a kinkey head. Cast your eye eastward ; see that cheeky, 
old serpent, having drawn his lengthened trail quite across the Pacific 
slope, is now lifting his hydra head high above the summits of the 
Nevadas, gazing with greedy eyes down upon the goodly heritage 
below. He has already begun to restore the lost cause. A kind 
hand is graciously offered to supply Her Majesty’s company at Ebho 
Vale with any amount of coolies to fill the places of a so-called 
park of idle Englishmen. 

Once more the workingmen of the nation are called into ranks, 
and the work of reform has commenced. The people of this Coast 
will endeavor to harmonize all departments of industrial labor, in 
the holy work of self-protection. We know that the contractors 
will oppose us ; many of the local presses, who have studiously 





avoided the coolie question, will laugh at us ; but, by the blessing 
of God, who brought us safely through the old slavery feud, we will 
march boldly, peaceably, resolutely, and fearlessly on to another 
victory over the same old serpent. Again our morals and intelli¬ 
gence are insulted, our home industries are paralyzed, and our tor- 
eign emigration from civilized countries is checked ; our sources of 
living are withheld, and our freedom assailed more effectually than 
by African slavery—as it is more insidious and universal. The 
workingmen have all at stake j they will speak out for themselves. 
They do not pretend to be the most loyal and genuine political ele¬ 
ment in the land ; but while they maintain a specialty , and have one 
grand object to attain, they will maintain the true spirit of interna¬ 
tional law that preserves our own welfare. They will advocate the 
true American idea of the Universal Fatherhood: equal rights to 
all, and exclusive privileges to none. We are not composed of in¬ 
triguing politicians, to deceive the people and unsettle public opin¬ 
ion ; but the intelligent masses are actuated with a desire to pro¬ 
mote the best interests of the whole people, by exposing the slavery 
feature of the coolie trade and oppression of the greedy monopo¬ 
lies. By feature , we mean the similarity between the two. As the 
features of a child resemble its parents, so the coolie traffic resem¬ 
bles the traffic in chattel slaves. If a Christian people cannot see 
this with past experience, surely we must be demented. If we 
allow the “ companies ” to fasten a new system of slavery upon us, 
our late domestic revolution would prove a failure ; for, in that 
event, we not only bring the entire white population of the whole 
Union into a worse bondage than that from which we delivered 
the Southern slave, but we bring another inferior race into a similar 
condition, from which they can go out and come in at leisure, leav¬ 
ing the “poor, white trash,” and freedmen, too, as the buzzard 
leaves the bones of the carrion by the wayside. But if the strong 
arm of the Government carefully protects the domestic rights and 
life of its producing citizens from this coolie invasion ; if it care¬ 
fully guards the morale and provides intellectual culture for the 
children and youth ; if we declare that the poor man’s labor is 
equally honorable as the rich man’s capital, and the reward due to a 
tradesman equal to that of a learned professor ; if we keep the 
highest franchises within the reach of the humblest citizen, without 
competition with any kind of slavery or cheap servile labor—the 
foundation and pillars of our political superstructure will be just, 
equal, loyal, complete, and trustworthy as the everlasting hills. 

When it is said the steamship company is trying to suppress 
this trade, and that the clergymen of this city are opposed to it, 
their conduct contradicts their profession* If they are opposed, 
why do they hold anti-coolie people in contempt, and prevent the 
free discussion of the subject ? The tricks of the combination and 
the clergy, their ticketed allies, must be exposed, and the whole 
subject, as it stands connected with the social, industrial, and po- 





107 


litical institutions of the entire country, have a fair and impartial 
ventilation. All ministers who do not desire to be understood as 
friends to the monopolies and coolie trade must let the world know 
where they stand. 

The most cogent reason offered by the Pacific Mail Steamship 
Company to obtain a subsidy was, “ the steamships of the line will 
become the nurseries for the instruction and practice of the young 
sailors of America.” Upon this plea an annual gift of five hundred 
thousand dollars of the nation’s money was voted to them by Con¬ 
gress. After three years of the first grant they besought Congress 
for more money, advancing the same argument about instructing 
the young men of the country in the art of seamanship. At this 
time they obtained a like grant as before, making the yearly gift to 
this company of outlandish speculators one million of the people’s 
money. 

But have they kept the pledge ? On the 28th of July the steamer 
fapan arrived with a cargoe of pagans, having a crew of eighty- 
nine persons, of whom sixty-six were Chinamen. So on all their 
numerous steamships, two thirds of the crew are Chinamen. Are 
they learning our boys to be sailors ? No. They are daily violat- 
ing the pledge made to Congress that the ships should be schools 
' for American seamen. The shipping law requires that twenty-six 
of the crew of every vessel that sails under the American flag shall 
be citizens of the United States; but this law is defied and violated 
everyday. Let every citizen consider these matters soberly. These 
subsidies were granted to them under the rights of “eminent 
domain,” or to promote the public good ; but they are using these 
franchises to promote their own private interests, to the injury of 
the whole country. The hordes of serfs, called emigrants, now im¬ 
ported like chatties under protection of treaty, with the poor man’s 
money, are only the advance guard of the millions that will follow 
them to these shores, unless they are checked by Congressional 
action, to supplant the laboring man in nearly every department of 
industry in every State of .the Union. But if the citizens of the 
Pacific Coast will move in this matter, by holding public discus¬ 
sions and disseminate the destructive consequences they have 
suffered by contact with the heathen, as cheap labor, other States 
will fall in line from sympathy, and compel congressional action 
that will arrest the evil by excluding the low races of all pagan 
nations who naturally degrade the vocation of labor, and retain 
the commerce, the same as England and all other nations have 
done. 

The cowardly and miserable trick in keeping with their Mongo¬ 
lian allies, to gain popularity for such a gross imposition, by an at¬ 
tempt to mislead the people with a pretended increase of commerce, 
will one day be met and condemned by an enlightened public opin¬ 
ion. Not much over one half of our so-called Asiatic commerce is 
legitimately a benefit to the country. The recent boasted increase 




108 


appertains mainly to the hordes of Chinamen and harlots under 
contract for servile labor, with the baggage, provisions, and goods 
belonging to the Chinese companies. Aside from a little money, 
taken at the Custom houses, the profits of all these importations 
enrich the two companies, and contribute nothing to our national 
prosperity, but much, every way, to its adversity. The one million 
of dollars, granted by Congress to the Pacific Mail Steamship com¬ 
pany last January, was not a reward for service rendered, but a sub¬ 
sidy from the people’s treasury to aid these self-denying men to 
make their ships more commodious to bring back male and female 
slaves. Who believes those arklike ships would find employment 
in Asiatic commerce, if the people of this nation veto the possibility 
of contracts for any kind of servile labor ? If the moral and polit¬ 
ical influence of the laboring classes shall speak for themselves, 
this extraordinary increase of Asiatic commerce would cease as 
African slavery did when father Abraham issued his edict of eman¬ 
cipation. 

What would you think of a parent whose avarice had made him 
dissatisfied with the expense of educating and clothing his own 
children in the style of intelligent civilians, if he should disin¬ 
herit them for ignorant, filthy waifs, whom he could manage with 
more servility, and get the same work at less expense ? But how 
much more despisable are those whose avarice has made them un¬ 
willing to support their own countrymen and women, up to the 
point of civilized life, practically disinherit them for an equal num¬ 
ber of filthy, barbarous, legalized victims of superstition and lust, 
whom they can manage and retain in a servile condition, and get 
the same work done one half less ! To say the least, such conduct 
is an unparalleled stretch of meanness, and the most aggravated 
insult to the common intelligence of a Christian people that the 
history of meanness has ever produced. If this system of servile 
labor is permitted to become a universal fixed fact, to regulate the 
national currency, settle the price of all wages, and the honor of all 
individual respectability, the time will come when we shall bitterly 
lament our folly, and find no place for repentance though we seek 
it carefully with tears. 

If we prefer to have this Coast settled with a population from the 
civilized nations of Europe and our own fatherland, why are we 
making more effort and offering greater inducements to one class of 
heathen , who so far have proved to be an unmitigated curse, than 
we are making for all others combined ? If we desire to have our 
country inhabited by a band of men and women who can enter into 
the spirit of, and swear allegiance to, our institutions, cultivate our 
soil, carry on our manufactories, cover the land with ornamental 
homesteads, increase the amount of taxable property, multiply in¬ 
telligent families to sustain our industries, schools, and colleges, 
what apology can be offered for importing fifty thousand heathen 
serfs this very year who do the people now in the State no good, 




109 


and, instead of promoting one of these desirable ends, are threat¬ 
ening to involve the entire country in universal ruin ? Surely, an 
honest desire for the public prosperity would prompt us to make 
corresponding laws and efforts for its encouragement. But, alas, 
we are doing everything in our power to discourage a civilized pop¬ 
ulation, and in the estimation of intelligent foreigners we are pur¬ 
suing a reckless and suicidal course. 


CHINESE AS SILK GROWERS. 

A correspondent of the Pacific Rural Press writes on this sub- 
fect as follows : 

“ Eds. Press :—As you have kindly asked the opinion of farmers 
upon the subjeet of silk-raising in California, and as the farmers 
have not responded, how would you like to hear a women’s view of 
the subject? It seems that silk has been successfully raised in 
Lake Co., and the editor is of the opinion that it will be so any¬ 
where that the mulberry tree will grow. In this I think he is mis¬ 
taken, for I have seen it tried in Southern California, from Los An¬ 
geles to San Diego. Expensive cocooneries have been built, old 
silk-raisers from Europe employed, fires have been kept to regulate 
the temperature of the cocoonery, and no pains or expense spared, 
and yet the worms would most of them die. Various reasons have 
been assigned for this mortality, but to me the only plausible one is 
the feeding of leaves from irrigated trees. Whether this begets a 
sourness or crudeness in the leaves, or whether some disease was 
hereditary in the eggs employed, is undecided. But the failure to 
make silk-raising a success was not owing to the want of “cheap 
labor,” for hundreds, yea thousands, stood ready to enter into the 
employment. When it is practically shown that healthy worms and 
good cocoons can be raised generally in California, there will be no 
trouble about the labor question. 

The editor thinks that “with Chinese labor at low prices, silk 
may be grown profitably.” Profitably to whom? To the Chinese 
most certainty, perhaps to the employer for a little while, until 
“John” is able to establish himself independently. After that how 
long will it take him to run his own establishment and inaugurate 
a second China on a small scale in California? He can come here 
and raise tea, raise silk, and show us outside barbarians “ what he 
knows about farming,” in a way that will be immensely profitable 
to China. 

The strongest argument put forth by those interested in silk cul¬ 
ture was, that it would furnish employment for women, children, and 
the aged and feeble. That in California, except in some favored lo- 





110 


calities, the whole family had to depend entirely upon the wages of 
the husband and father for subsistence. The system advocated 
was similar to that practiced in southern Europe, where a few mul¬ 
berry trees scattered about the place, or a mulberry orchard, ena¬ 
ble a family to raise several crops of silkworms through the sum¬ 
mer, with little more disturbance to its ordinary arrangements than 
would be the raising of several broods of fowls. The cocoons are 
sold to the “silkman” to be manufactured near home, or exported 
as raw silk. For further information on this subject I would refer 
you to Prevost’s Works on Silk Culture. The advantages advo¬ 
cated must be obvious to every one ; a healthful, cheerful employ¬ 
ment, within the compass of weak nerves and feeble muscles, 
would lift the “ Primal curse” from many an anxious heart and ach¬ 
ing back. Soon some enterprising manufactory would be fed by 
these thousand small rivulets of silk, until California could boast a 
new industry both creditable and profitable to her own citizens. 

A great deal is written for the benefit of women about “ sticking 
to her sphere.” In view of the unlimited influx of the coolies, 
what will be the proper sphere of the coming woman ? Shall she, 
silently, see the old industries slipping one by one from her grasp, 
and the new nonchalantly handed over to “John,” without so much 
as “by your leave.” With Chinese men for household servants, for 
seamstresses and nurses, invading what has always been conceded 
her true work—with our young men robbed of their employments 
and reduced in wages, becoming every year less and less able to 
marry—the path of woman grows dark in the distant future. 

Must we suffer the thought, that the Chinese eunuch and harlot 
will be sufficient for the working of the new system, in the “good 
time coming.” If so, let us, while we are in the spirit of it, adopt 
the custom still in vogue, in some parts of China, of not raising the 
common crop of girls, and instruct the few rich families to careful¬ 
ly bind the feet of their daughters so they cannot, if they would, be 
anything but helpless dependents upon their masters. With this 
system at work for a few years, what is to prevent the Pacific Coast, 
at least, from becoming a second Celestial kingdom ? 

In reply to this the Press says : “ The drift of our correspond¬ 
ent’s effort seems to be against the Chinese as laborers amongst us, 
whilst we believe them to be useful as “ hewers of wood and draw¬ 
ers of water ;” in other words, servants for hire, and that is all we 
propose to make of them.” 

What more is needed to prove that the Press is in favor of a 
landed aristocracy, with serfs, instead of citizens, to do the work ? 
How could such an inferior race fail to degrade the vocation of la¬ 
bor and make our rising bovs and girls avoid it as something dis¬ 
graceful ? Besides, what employment will you find for an equal 
number of dependent agricultural laborers ? If the farmers of 
the Pacific Coast desire to exclude their sons from the occupations 
of their fathers, and substitute a low race of pagan servants, we 
have greatly mistaken their character. 




Ill 


THE PROBLEM SOLVED ON THE PACIFIC COAST. 

At a meeting of the citizens of the Seventh Ward, San Francisco, 
it was decided that, “ The problem of Chinese importation is solved 
on the Pacific Coast; and its Solution clearly points to the enslave¬ 
ment of the working men and women and youth of the land. The 
Pacific , Aug. 6th, says : 

“Twenty-two Chinese women arrived on Thursday last by the 
steamship “ Japan,” in this city. The lot were taken to the Chinese 
quarter, and the next day were put upon the market, all meeting 
with ready sale at prices ranging from one hundred to three hun¬ 
dred and fifty dollars. One of the pincipal purchasers was an agent 
from some point in the interior of the State.” 

Is this any thing less than slavery ? Yet these pious Editors, 
whose lives have been devoted to the anti-slavery cause, allude to 
this traffic in human beings as chattels, without a word of rebuke. 
And if one of their number dare raise his voice against the most 
outrageous insult ever offered to a civilized people, they turn up a 
lip of scorn and treat him as unworthy of their fellowship and sup¬ 
port. Most of the Protestant ministry, press, and laymen, toler¬ 
ate this new system of slavery with all its horrors before their eyes. 
They make more effort to educate these pagans in Sabbath schools 
than they do their own neighbors’ children. They laud and ad¬ 
mire the system not so much to save their souls, as to make slaves 
of soul and body; as to get the difference between the wages of 
a decent country woman and a China man , whom they can treat 
more as a slave in the bed-room and kitchen, that God designed to 
be the proper sphere of woman. Rev. W. Lobscheid, Pastor of 
the United German Evangelical Lutheran St. Mark’s Church, of 
San Francisco, is the only noble exception who has dared to lift 
his voice against the “enemy of all good ” from his pulpit. 

The Bulletin, of Aug. 5th, informs us that two Chinese merchants 
of acknowledged respectability and influence, who have long been 
residents of San Francisco, and are conversant with the customs 
and language of the American people, called and voluntarily ex¬ 
plained the system of securing women for prostitution as practiced 
by their countrymen. Most of the women are kidnapped and 
brought here by force. If the steamship owners knew this, were 
they not ftai'ticeps criminis in this transaction ? As soon as the 
China steamer arrives carriages are sent to the wharfs to remove 
the females imported to Hip Yee Tong’s house, where they are 
stored until the owner or owners come forward and pay the forty 
dollars charges, with the understanding that in case of a default, 
the woman will be sold to pay expenses. The Bulletin is informed 
that Hip Yee Tong has imported over six thousand women to San 
Francisco, and realized from his sales, about two hundred thousand 




112 


dollars. But who is responsible for the twenty or thirty thousand 
women scattered over the Pacific slope ? 

It is suggested that the authorities can suppress the traffic in 
Chinese women ; if so, why not the traffic in men ? If you permit 
any number of men to come here as pretended emigrants, by what 
rule or reasoning can you prohibit the same number of women ? 
Surely, you would not inflict such a system of eternal celibacy upon 
any other race. Prohibit the men if you refuse the women. If 
you reject the women and retain the men, the latter will become, in 
the “social problem,” a thousand times worse than they now are, as 
they did without their own women in Australia. 

The Pacific Rural Press has unwittingly expressed the sentiment 
prevailing all over the land among the rich, from whom the poor 
men of our country are to expect nothing but oppression: “We 
want the men for ‘ hewers of wood ’ to do the drudgery, or cheap 
work, and nothing more.” But is it right, safe, and in accordance 
with our Republican institutions, to tolerate such a class of servile, 
human beings ? It is a singular fact that most of the clergy and 
their members think it is. They oppose the anti-coolie people, be¬ 
cause they are Christianizing so many of them. But who are doing 
this, and what class of Chinamen are benefited? Evidently the ma¬ 
jority are clergymen, deacons, elders, and rich members, who have 
discharged a decent country woman for a Chinaman to do the work 
of the kitchen, and fix up the bedrooms. The parents look upon 
these servants as the Southern masters did their slaves ; the child¬ 
ren look down upon them as a low race of servants. They treat 
them all through the week as such, and on Sunday they are brought 
into the Sabbath schools to learn our letters and religion, as though 
God winked at this terrible system of peonage, because they taught 
the victim of avarice and oppression to read and pray. We did 
that much for the African slave, but was God satisfied with that 
“ pious dodge ? ” The Christianizing is confined to Christian and 
ministerial households, and is nothing but a system of Galvan¬ 
ized slavery. It is a Christian saying to a heathen: “John, you 
may come to this Christain land if you will be a drudge. We will 
teach you to read, pray, and worship God, but you must not aspire 
to be anything more than a slave, just as you were at home. If you 
will do our work cheap, we will be kind to you, but we do not want 
anything more ; that is all Josh wanted, and that is all we want. 
You can go where and do what you please at night, only be on 
hand early and attend Sabbath school on Sunday.” But John 
don’t see it in that light; as his knowledge and skill increases, 
he bursts his narrow limits and rises into “higher spheres,” better 
qualified to displace the printers, book-binders, merchants, and 
all kind of laborers, because he can do it as well and at one half 
the price. 

There is no alternative ; you must have both men and women, or 
neither. You must abrogate the treaty and exclude the pagans 




113 


from our shores, as laborers to compete with our citizens in the 
source of living, upon the principle of self-preservation. He that 
does not provide for his own household is worse than an infidel. 


THE DUTY OF THE NATION TO DEFEND ITSELF. 

It now becomes the duty of the tax-paying and producing peo¬ 
ple of this Coast and Nation to defend themselves against the con¬ 
sequences of a mistaken legislation in regard to the international 
treaty with China. The public press must denounce the men who 
are engaged in this inhuman trade as equal with those who traded 
in Negro slaves. The people must form themselves into a vigil¬ 
ance committee and cry out against it. It is only a pity for the ris¬ 
ing generation and love for our common country, that constrains me 
to urge my countrymen to arrest this national curse. Have we no 
power to prevent the introduction of a leprous hord of serfs, for 
private speculation, to drive our children into idleness and crime ? 
Must the citizens of a whole nation stand up to the rack and tie 
themselves to a living corpse, because it claims to be a commercial 
relation over which Congress has sole jurisdiction ? Is that a com¬ 
mercial relation in the Constitutional meaning, if to enrich a few 
it impoverishes a whole State ? The people have looked upon the 
dark side of this second effort to bring them into bondage till for¬ 
bearance resembles crime. When a people rise in their majesty to 
oppose an oppressor, and assert their rights, wo be to the govern¬ 
ment that lifts a hand against it! 

Our country and its “ benign institutions,” was left to us by our 
fathers. This free country, free soil, free schools, and right of pri¬ 
vate opinion, with love for things that are pure, were purchased 
with blood and treasure before they came into our hands. This 
lovely land and glorious liberty is ours to enjoy, and then to trans¬ 
mit—to whom ? to the heathen, to serfs, to a landed aristocracy, or to 
our posterity ? We extend the hand of friendship to all nations as 
freemen , but not so as to exclude our own children and transmit 
the inheritage to masters and slaves. We cannot even afford to 
give the Gospel to the heathen if thereby we withhold it from our 
children. If our fathers transmitted this goodly inheritage to us, 
is it not our duty to give it unimpaired to the boys and girls who 
come after us ? Have we nothing to do with the future career of 
the boys who are to occupy our places and finish what we have be¬ 
gun ? Are we not the responsible guardians of their future as our 
fathers were of ours ? Are there no correlative duties and relations 
between the Government and its minors ? Does our safety and 
strength depend any more upon the popular education and indus- 





- 114 - 

trial skill of the boys than it does upon the preservation of an 
equal government, and the means of maintenance? What encour¬ 
agement are we now offering to the millions of children who are 
doomed to get their living by doing the legitimate work of their 
fathers, if their fathers substitute an equal number of barbarians 
to do the work cheaper than they can ? What advantage to them 
or the nation to perfect our boys and girls in the industrial arts, if 
in ten years they go forth to apply what they know, to the practical 
purposes of life, and find the patrimony preoccupied by an inferior 
race of servile laborers, driven by masters ? What work have we 
for the boys to do when they come home from the schools, perfected 
in the arts and trades ? Where then will be the dignity of hands, 
and where the dignity of heads ? Let Satan, who always has work 
for idle hands, reply : “ In the liquorshop and gambling saloon ; 
in the hoodlum’s gang, locked up in jail; in the gang of thieves 
and houses of imported cheap women ; in the gang of robbers and 
chained in State’s prison ; on the criminal’s scaffold and in the 
drunkard’s grave. But if in addition to intellectual culture and 
industrial habits we preserve the work of the nation for them ; if 
we create new labor-saving machinery and new employments, if 
we make them feel the dignity of doing the work their fathers did 
by setting a good example—there will be no need of “servants 
for hire,” and the boys and girls will go forth from the school and 
workshop, with an ever-present sense of the dignity of hands as 
well as heads. 

I claim that we, as parents, are solemnly bound to transmit 
these blessings to our children. We can preserve them only by 
banishing from the society of our children and youth every thing 
that is contaminating and impure ; every thing that has even a 
tendency to destroy the freedom and civilization in which we were 
nursed and instructed. We can do this only by securing to them 
the same opportunties for employment and improvement; the same 
sources of living and mental cultivation that we received from our 
fathers. But if our selfish love of money and power shall change 
this traditional custom, of handing unimpaired to our children that 
which we received, over to the new custom of the pro-coolie men ; 
if we go upon the principle of “God bless the foremost, and the 
Devil take the hindmost,” we deliberately disinherit our children, 
and let the heathen come into our inheritance ; if we close all the 
avenues of living against them and employ serfs because it costs 
less to feed and clothe them, whom we can treat as slaves ; if 
we turn a deaf ear to the appeals of our own countrymen for 
work, and give every opportunity to make a living to the heathen— 
they will remember us with a retaliation that will be more disas¬ 
trous to the whole country than was the late rebellion. 

But the earnestness and spirit displayed by all classes of people 
at the present time is continued, we may hope to check the further 
importation of coolies into the United States, at least in the next 





115 


Presidential election. The moment that is done the feeling of dis¬ 
quietude and insecurity that now alarms the people will be allayed. 
That which has checked our prosperity, retarded the increase of 
American population and growth of cities, will vanish. The mo¬ 
ment that any further accession to the number of coolies on our 
shores is prohibited, the number now here will begin to diminish 
and in a few years disappear altogether ; while the better class of 
European society who have been displaced and discouraged, will 
return. Then, instead of swarming, unfranchised serfs to eat out 
the substance of the land, reducing its inhabitants slowly to pover¬ 
ty and shame, five times that number of intelligent citizens will 
come in to drive out the savages, prostrate the forests, cultivate 
fertile fields, build railroads and manufactories, thriving villages and 
busy cities, with their schools of learning, renowned for their in¬ 
dustry and commerce, swarming with a prosperous and happy, free 
and Christain people, who have sworn an eternal allegiance to the 
noblest institutions, the most prolific soil and genial clime on the 
face of the globe. 




DUTY OF POLITICAL PARTIES. 


This book is not conceived in the interest of any political party, 
but it is hoped its principles will permeate all parties, leading them 
to sink the partisan in the patriot; and, however much they may 
differ in minor points, unite in a solid phalanx at the ballot box de¬ 
manding that the Chinese treaty shall be abrogated as inimical to 
our best interests, and conflicting with an Act passed by Congress, 
in 1807, as follows : 

ACT PASSED BY CONGRESS IN 1807. 

“ From and after January 1st, 1808, it shall not be lawful to import 
or bring into the United States or the Territories thereof, from any 
foreign kingdom, place or country, any negro, mulatto or person of 
color, with the intent to hold, sell, or dispose of such negro, mulat¬ 
to, or person of color, as a slave, or to be held to do service or la¬ 
bor.” 

Let every true Son of Liberty, be he Catholic or Prostestant, 
Democrat or Republican, saint or sinner, put his shoulder to the 
wheel and help roll back this car of Juggernaut that threatens to 
crush us all. 

Politicians of the present, would you have your names added to 
that scroll of fame headed by Washington, or would you be on that 
other list that Benedict Arnold leads ? If you prefer the former, 
then see to it, “ that this lovely land, this glorious liberty, these 
benign institutions ” are transmitted unimpaired to our latest pos¬ 
terity. 

We expect neither honor, office, nor gain, for our labors in this 
cause, but like Paul of old, “ our heart's desire and prayer to God 
for our countrymen is, that we may be saved,” as a nation, from our 
sins and from our enemies. 









■'f P. COLE, President. 


0 . W. MERRIAM, Treasurer. 


CALIFORNIA 



SUCCESSORS TO 

N. P. COLE & CO. 


MANUFACTURERS, IMPORTERS, 


Wholesale and Retail Dealers in 

FURNITURE 


-AND- 


BEDDING, 


Nos. 220 } I'll, 224- and 22S Bush St. 


SAN FRANCISCO. 
























< — « — » 


In discussing the evils of Chinese Immigration and the existing de¬ 
pression of business in San Francisco, consequent upon the displacement of 
white labor by Chinese in our workshops, the “ Golden Era ” hits the nail 
square on the head in the following: 

“ The only measure of redress which holds out any promise of relief, 
is the formation of anti-Chinese societies all over the Coast, the members of 
which shall be pledged not to employ Chinese, nor to purchase goods of 
Chinese manufacturers. They first propose these anti-Chinese societies 
should be to make themselves felt in the character of purchasers. If one 
thousand men in this city should effect an organization, under a solemn 
pledge not to employ Chinese nor to purchase goods of individuals or firms 
who might employ them, it would greatly strengthen the hands of such of 
our local manufacturers as are now engaged in the experiment of compet¬ 
ing with Chinese manufacturers. If this one thousand was multiplied by 
ten, as it soon might be, the success of the experiment would be assured. 
These societies must be organized without the aid of law, as no law would 
be constitutional that discriminated against Chinese residents. Such or¬ 
ganizations could only be carried out where the community is nearly unan¬ 
imous in favor of the object to be attained; but such unanimity, it is 
believed, prevails in this State.” 

The experiment has been tried by at least one man in San Francisco. 
We allude to Mr. H. Sutliff, who is proprietor of two large stores, 330 and 
832 Kearny street. As long ago as 1860 , Mr. Sutliff, knowing what the 
result of Chinese labor would be, formed the resolution to neither employ 
Chinese workmen, nor sell, nor purchase cigars made by Chinese, and he 
has carried out this resolution to the present day, and will continue to 
adhere to it as long as he remains in business. Many of his friends thought 
it impossible for him to stem the current of opposition to those in the same 
trade who employed Chinese workmen ; but he has done so successfully, and 
instead of the one small establishment which he commenced with at the 
time of forming this resolution, he now has two of the largest in the city. 












UNITED WORKINGMEN’S 

CO-OPERATIVE 



Manufacturers of a Large Assortment of 



MISSES’ AND CHILDREN'S 



Our goods have no superior in the market 9 
and are sold at low rates . 


The only practical way of settling the Chinese Question is not to bu 
or use any goods made by the Chinese or by any person who employs them 
The UNITED WORKINGMEN’S is the only Factory in San Francisco that 
never employed a Chinaman, and all who wish to encourage White Labor 
should buy their goods ; they are sold by retailers all over the Coast, and 
are stamped with the name 



Dealers can send their Orders to 


JSTo. 400 SANSOME STREET, 


SAN FRANCISCO. 


























S. E. BUTTON <£ CO. 

402 & 404 8 AN 8 OME ST. 

SAN FRANCISCO, CAL. 

IMPORTERS AND MANUFACTURERS 


OF ®VERY DESCRIPTION OF 



TWINES, LIQUOR, TABLES, ETC. 


AGENTS FOR 

Carter’s Inks and Mucilage* 


ALL GOODS -AT THE LOWEST MARKET RATES 



626 & 628 Kearny St., bet. Clay and Commercial, 



SAN FRANCISCO. 






























TREADWELL & GO. 


IMPORTERS OF 



For Farmers, Miners, Millmen, Etc. 


Agricultural Implements, Portable Engines, Farm 
Wagons, Mills, Hoisting Engines, Hydraulic 

Jacks, Belting, 

Wood and Iron Working Machinery, Steam Pumps, Miners’, Engineers’ 
and Machinists’ Tools, Shelf Hardware, Mill Supplies, Etc. 


AT THE OLD STAND, 

Market St., head of Front, SAN FRANCISCO. 


Joseph Brooks. 


Chas. Jas. King. 


C. JAS. KING of WM. & CO. 

manufacturers of 



815, 817 & 819 Sansome St. 


IT ear Broadway, SAN FRANCISCO. 

- -4 - 


Orders received at Garrett <t; Moron’s, S. E. Corner 
Sansome and Clay Streets. 































Cigar Makers’ Union, 

MANUFACTURERS OF 



OF THE BEST 


f itlla Abajc Havana and Bemestle Tobaeeo, 

324 Clay St., bet. Battery and Front, 

(SECOND FLOOR,) 

Orders directed to S, ORTEGA, SAN FRANCISCO. 


XTO CHIXTAMEXT EMPLOYED. 



MANUFACTURER OF 


HAVANA AND DOMESTIC 



410 GImRY street^ 


Near Battery, up stairs, SAX FRANCISCO. 


Cigars made by the white, delicate hands of ladies. 


























I 



OB 


WHAT THE PEOPLE ON THE PACIFIC COAST 

THINK OF THE 


COOLIE INVASION. 


By M. B. STARR. 


“The accumulations and consolidations of wealth in a few hands, in the hands of vast 
corporations, are threatening the liberty of the individual, the integrity of the State, the 
purity of the court, the \ery existence of popular legislation; and nothing but the true 
spirit of religion will ever enable this nation to meet its coming struggles—for we are going 
to have struggles.” * * * There is not a State in this'Union that we can afford to 
have barbarous.” 


























Pocket Cutlery, Paper Bags, 

WRAPPING PAPER, 


Playing Cards, Drawing Papers, Etc. 

OJST THE F^OIFIO COAST. 


As we are agents for the several leading Eastern manufacturers, and 
our goods are manufactured expressly for us, they are especially adapted 
to the wants of the Pacific States; and carrying, as we do, the largest stock 
of Stationery on this coast, we are enabled to otter buyers lower rates than 
they can obtain elsewhere, and less than New York or Chicago jobbing 
prices. 

Nos. 327, 329 and 331 SANSOME STREET, 


SAN FRANCISCO. 
































KOHLER, CHASE & CO. 

633 and 635 CLAY STREET, SAN FRANCISCO. 

AGENTS FOR THE CELEBRATED 



ALSO, FOR THE WORLD-RENOWNED 

MASON & HAMLIN 



SEND FOB DESCRIPTIVE CIRCULARS. 


.1 






































































































>HEal0jS 

fw BRYAN! 

BUSIne 


BRYANT & STRATTON 

SS COLLEGE 

a U-P0STS7r —^ 





SAN FRANCISCn 


The most Popular School on the Coast for Boys and Young Men. 



Single and Double Entry Book-Keeping, 


X 


Plain and Ornamental Penmanship, 


Commercial Arithmetic, 

Modern Languages, 

Real Estate, 

Business Correspondence, 

Phonography, 

Telegraphy, 

Mercantile Law, 

Railroading, 

Commission, 

Actual Business, 

Surveying, 

Importing, 

Merchandising, 

Brokerage, 

Forwarding, 

Insurance, 

Exchange, 

Grammar, 

Banking, 

Jobbing, 

Rhetoric, 

Mechanical Drawing, 

Mining, 

Reading, 

Spelling. 


I? 


i “Hi ““i ■ 


1 




YOUNG MEN AND LADIES 

Wishing to prepare themselves for the practical duties of life, -will find this to be the 
School. Pupils learn just what they will use to accomplish success, and do not med¬ 
dle with superfluous studies. Each Student receives separate instruction, and can 
thus advance as rapidly as desired, not being kept back by those more deficient. All 
persons passing the final Examination in a satisfactory manner, will receive our 
finely engraved Graduating Diplomy. Graduates of this College are in demand 
among Business Men, and can readily find good positions. Such as are in good 
standing are assisted in obtaining situations, if desired. 

Hsald’s College Journal, 

Is issued monthly, by the College, and contains full particulars regarding the Course 
of Studies, Expenses, etc. ; also, a large amount of interesting reading. Specimen 
copies can be obtained, free of charge, either at the College Office, 2n Post Street, or 
by addressing 


President Business College, SAN FRANCISCO. 


































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